


Single in Gotham

by ORiley42



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Gabe is a good bro, Happy Ending, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Online Dating, heists and hijinks, jim and harvey see things they cant unsee, murder boyfriends, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 06:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11030223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42
Summary: Feeling lonely, Oswald ends up on a dating app, where he makes an enigmatic new friend with whom he begins a new relationship, and a new chapter of his life... love, riddles, murder, theft, and an all-around good time ensue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been chipping away at this fic for what feels like forever, but it's finally here!  
> I felt like this pairing needed some more trope-y goodness. I hope you all enjoy it! <3
> 
> This is a s2 AU, where Galavan never happened, and Ed & Oswald hadn’t met yet.

 

“You’re lonely, boss,” Gabe noted mournfully, handing Oswald the paper at breakfast early one morning.

“I’m not lonely,” Oswald sighed, taking the newspaper and beginning to unfold it, “although your concern is touching.”

“You _are_ ,” Gabe insisted, “All you do is work, work, work...you never go out, unless it’s to do a job or whack somebody.”

Oswald paused in his perusal of the front page to narrow his eyes at Gabe. “Have you been watching _Oprah_ again?” he asked, knowingly.

Gabe shifted guiltily. “She’s such a smart lady,” he admitted.

Oswald rolled his eyes, and resumed scanning the headlines.

“I get that it’s hard to meet people,” Gabe continued, oblivious to Oswald’s complete lack of interest in the conversation, “But that’s ok. You could get an account on one of those dating sites.”

Oswald blinked, slowly setting the paper down. “ _You_ know about _dating sites_?” He asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity.

“Sure I do. See, I know about technology. The Internet. Google. _Twitter_.” Gabe raised his eyebrows meaningfully as if that last piece of information was supposed to be especially impressive. It was, actually, as Oswald hadn’t been entirely sure Gabe could operate a can opener, much less a computer.

“Well, that’s...good to know,” he finally concluded, diplomatically.

“So you’re gonna do it?” Gabe asked, hopeful.

“I’d rather die alone,” Oswald replied cheerfully, shaking open his discarded newspaper with a snap and thus ending their little talk.

But, as ideas tend to do, Gabe’s suggestion took root in Oswald’s brain. It resurfaced a few nights later when he found himself lying awake in bed, thoroughly disgusted with the fact that over the course of too many sleepless nights he’d memorized the pattern of cracks in the ceiling.

He was, he rationalized later on, desperate and sleep deprived, and that surely accounted for why he picked up his phone and started tapping away until he’d downloaded an app called “Single in Gotham” and made an account.

He fabricated some fake biographical information, entered a username, added a generic image of a black umbrella for his profile picture, and voilà – he was officially out there in the digital dating world.

His nerve held out for approximately three seconds before he was closing out of the app and slamming his phone on the bedside table. He rolled over, dragging the covers up to his chin and squeezing his eyes resolutely shut. It had been a stupid idea anyway.

Only two nights later, as Oswald was finding shapes in the familiar cracks in the ceiling and contemplating his deep, gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, he once again gave in to the urge to open “Single in Gotham.” 

To his mild surprise, he’d received a few messages since he’d been gone. Most of them turned out to be spam, but there was one gentleman who’d sent him two messages in quick succession. The first welcomed Oswald to “the community,” while the second one warned him to “mind your manners or I’ll cut you in two” – talk about split personality. But, that was Gotham for you.

With that encouraging start, Oswald decided to move on to the app’s search function. He chose “random match” from the drop-down list and started flicking through the results.

There were some rather unsavory characters, which, coming from someone who prided himself on being frequently unsavory, was saying something.

First up was a man so muscled that to say he was on steroids was a criminal understatement.

Following that, there was a guy with what was, to say the least, a worrisome obsession with condiments.

In a moment of horror, Oswald realized he’d stumbled upon what he was fairly certain was Victor Zsasz’ profile, and he’d never clicked away from anything faster – there were some things he truly did not want to know.

There was a man who Oswald couldn’t be entirely sure was human, but surely a reptile wouldn’t have been able to navigate a touchscreen and make an account.

There was also a man who looked like he might actually be a reanimated corpse, and that was almost enough for Oswald to exit the app, but a morbid sort of curiosity kept him swiping through.

Among these more ominous users, there was plenty of blander fare: nice haircuts, sharp suits, glittering smiles. The mere sight was enough to inspire even greater boredom than that which had driven him to “Single in Gotham” in the first place.

Ultimately, the greatest failing of the entire system was that it was based on physical appearance – it was all a game of elaborate facades, with no hint of depth. He didn’t know if he’d really expected anything different, but when confronted with that reality he was forced to wonder why he’d even bothered, especially considering the original idea for him to look for companionship online came from a man with the IQ of a wilted eggplant.

He sighed and was about to give the whole thing up as a lost cause when a profile picture caught his eye: a simple green question mark on a black background. Amongst the sea of toothy grins and flattering photo filters, the minimalist design was eye-catching. Intriguing, even. Perhaps it was indicative of someone like Oswald, someone who valued their inner self enough to not wear them on their sleeve, someone who knew half the fun of meeting other people lay in dissecting them until their ticking insides were laid bare and their secrets were yours...

Or maybe it was nearly 2am and Oswald was reading entirely too much into a one-centimeter-square arrangement of pixels.

In any case, his interest was piqued enough to warrant him tapping on the icon for a closer look.

The profile of “RiddleMeThis” was sparse; aside from the required questions about their own gender (male) and the preferred gender of their potential partners (no preference) it was blank, except for three lines of text in the biography section:

“I’m a reason to kill, a reason to die,

A reason to hope, a reason to try,

What am I?”

Oswald snorted. RiddleMeThis was certainly living up to his username. The wordplay was simple, and more than a little cheesy, but he couldn’t help himself from clicking the message icon and typing out the answer.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Love.

He waited impatiently for a minute, hoping for a response, but when none came he tossed his phone aside and threw a pillow over his face, not sure if he was more annoyed at the stranger on the internet for not replying immediately or with himself for bothering to say anything in the first place.

About ten seconds after he’d sworn he’d delete the app in the morning and forget about it, his phone pinged. RiddleMeThis had responded.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Right in one!

 _RiddleMeThis:_ How about something a little trickier?

 _RiddleMeThis:_ I fly without wings, I run without feet, what am I?

Oswald rolled his eyes. Maybe he really had been wrong about Question Mark Guy having any depth; maybe all that lay beneath the surface were more Laffy Taffy wrapper riddles.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Time.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I thought you said this would be difficult.

Much faster than before, the other man responded.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Hmm, just testing the waters....

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Do you like riddles?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Not really

 _KingOfGotham52:_ But I do like a challenge

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Alright then, your turn. Stun me with your linguistic flourishes.

Oswald chewed his lip for a minute before resorting to Google.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’m a box without hinges, key, or lid; yet golden treasure inside is hid.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : An egg.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Was I not supposed to notice that you stole that from Tolkien?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Ideally, yes.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : If you’re tired of riddles, you can just say so.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I am tired of riddles.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : ...

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I walked right into that one.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Yes, you did. So, let’s talk about something of more interest.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : And that is?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ You.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Can I have a name?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You can call me Ed.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Ed?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Yes.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Really.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Yes? Do you find it offensive in some way?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Not offensive to ME but...it seems rather too ordinary for someone like you.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I think you don’t know me well enough to know exactly how extraordinary I am.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : But I appreciate what I’ll choose to believe was a veiled compliment from you.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’ll endeavor to make my compliments more opaque in the future.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : That would be most helpful.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ So. How extraordinary are you?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Very.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ In what way?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Why does it concern you?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Well, I’m working on a poem called An Obvious and Unmistakable Compliment to Ed and I’m running out of generic adjectives for “spectacular.”

 _RiddleMeThis_ : For such a noble cause, I’ll give you a hint: I spend my days with Florence and Erlenmeyer, who contain multitudes.

Oswald wanted to be annoyed that they’d only managed to go two minutes without a riddle, but truth be told, he was pleased. He grinned to himself as he searched for the terms “Florence” and “Erlenmeyer.” Once again, the Internet came to his aid.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Science!

 _KingOfGotham52:_ You’re a scientist who works in lab.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Bravo!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : And as much as I’d like to see what wonders this additional information does for your artistic endeavors, I’m already going to be running on fumes at work tomorrow, and had best sign off.

Oswald had to quash a nauseatingly sentimental pang of disappointment at that. Worse still, his heart actually leapt when another message lit up his screen a moment later.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : But I expect a rough draft of my poem by tomorrow morning.

The little green dot next to Ed’s username blinked to gray, indicating he’d gone offline, and Oswald followed suit.

He lay back in bed, pulse going a little faster than it really should at rest, eyes flickering sightlessly over the ceiling as he replayed his and Ed’s conversation in his head.

It had begun with a tone that was frankly adversarial, but ended on a note that was friendly, bordering on flirtatious. And not the cookie-cutter kind of flirting that was just ticking off a box on the societal expectation of romantic overtures before a hook-up – no, this had happened naturally. Just talking to Ed had been easy, even fun.

Oswald scrubbed a hand over his face as he realized that he may or may not be really, really, screwed. After all, he’d just exchanged a few dozen texts with a complete stranger, and it was already the most engaging conversation he’d had in weeks. And he was thinking seriously about coming up with at least a stanza of An Obvious and Unmistakable Compliment to Ed.

There was no way this was going to end well.

~~~~~

 _KingOfGotham52_ :

I just met a man named Ed,

I hung on every word he said,

An expert in STEM,

He’s a real gem,

The mysterious RiddleMeThis.

Oswald sent the message and immediately wished he could reach into the screen and claw it back out. What in the name of god was he _doing_? Sending half-baked, asinine poems to some random person on the internet? Surely, his mother had warned him about something like this. Probably her cautions had more to do with being seduced by axe-murderers, but still – he should know better.

In an attempt at damage control, he added a bit of sarcasm.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : I don’t know about you, but I think I could be in the running for Gotham’s new poet laureate.

An hour later, Oswald was glaring out the window of a shiny Cadillac Fleetwood as Butch chauffeured him from a gangland territory dispute to a meeting for finalizing the details of an assassination of a local bureaucrat. Overall, it had been a dull, tiresome morning, and it was shaping up to be a dull, tiresome day.

But then his phone buzzed, and when he pulled it out of his pocket, instead of a call from more posturing thugs or blubbering politicians, he found a green question mark glowing sedately up at him. He opened the message with a hastily suppressed smile, mindful of Butch’s keen eye and still questionable loyalty.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Oh my!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : What a pleasant surprise....you hired a four year old to write a poem for me.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : I am wounded. You clearly have no taste for high art.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You’re right, a thousand apologies. Your choice to rhyme “STEM” and “gem” is admittedly inspired.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : I knew you’d see reason.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Speaking of reason....

 _KingOfGotham52_ :  Oh god I feel another riddle coming on

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Right-o!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : The story is this: You’re at the park and you see two women. They look positively identical. I tell you they have the same mother, father, and date of birth....but they’re not twins. How is this possible?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You chew on that, and let me know when you’ve figured it out. I’ve got to go to work.

Oswald shoved his phone back in his pocket and glared out the car window with renewed vigor. However, no matter how much he tried to feel annoyed at the appearance of yet another pesky riddle, there was something enjoyable in being given the opportunity to actually use his brain a little. Certainly his body was taxed by long days and longer nights, surrounded by brutes and thieves, but his mind languished.

Where was the man who’d put together the thousand moving pieces of Gotham’s seething underbelly and followed the trail of cause and effect beginning with his own attempted murder and ending with the death or disappearance of not one but all three of Gotham’s most powerful crime lords? He was enduring meetings with the most uninspired kind of criminals, keeping tabs on the ebb and flow of drugs and guns throughout the city, and making sure the bribery fund for city officials was topped up.

He was a diplomat, a paper pusher – and he was good at it. Things ran smoothly.

But at the end of the day, a small part of him still wished Jim Gordon would come busting in on a righteous high, ready to try and take him down, bring him to justice. There was no challenge in his well-oiled machine of empire. There was no fun.

So, as he made sure that that empire continued to function, he allowed a part of his mind to wander as it pondered Ed’s riddle.

~~~~~

Oswald had just sat down to dinner when the answer came to him in a flash of inspiration. He threw down his silverware and dug out his phone, typing triumphantly.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : They’re triplets. The two women in the park – they’re identical TRIPLETS and their third sister isn’t there.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well done!

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Now that I’ve answered your question, I’ve got one of my own: why are you here?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Where?

 _KingOfGotham52_ : “Single in Gotham”

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I feel the answer to that should be obvious

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Not necessarily. There are people on here looking for hook-ups, friends, victims to murder and chop up into little pieces, companions just to talk to....

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You should already know the answer to that riddle.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : ...Love? You’re looking for love on a 99 cent app with cheesy graphics and tacky background music?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well, obviously I muted the dreadful music, first thing.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : But, yes, I suppose. It’s logical to cultivate multiple options, given the high probability of failure on at least some fronts, and given my past disappointments in the usual realms of meeting people, it seemed a wise choice.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : How....logical.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Do I detect disdain in your words?

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Maybe. After all, love isn’t logical.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Perhaps it’s not. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be pursued with some element of rationality.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : What are YOU doing here, then?

That gave Oswald pause. What _was_ he doing here, really?

He answered honestly.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Hell if I know

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Mind if I put forward a guess?

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Please do

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I would hypothesize that you arrived at this illustrious dating app out of boredom and loneliness, and that you’ve chosen to continue our conversations because they manage to diminish one or both of those unfortunate conditions.

As Oswald read Ed’s message, an inexplicable sort of rage threatened to fog over his vision. How dare this complete stranger _presume_ to know _anything_ about him?

Even if he’s _right_? A more rational part of his mind asked quietly.

As if in response to his internal struggle, another message from Ed lit up the screen of Oswald’s phone.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I would also suppose that my accurate summation of your situation has angered you, for its lack of diplomatic delivery, perhaps, or more simply because it hit too close to home, as they say.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : In either case, I feel I should inform you, in turn, that getting to talk to you, even in this limited textual format, has made me feel less bored and less lonely as well, and if it would please you, I’d very much like to continue our acquaintance.

Damn it. Oswald squeezed his eyes shut and tried hard to deny the warm feelings wriggling in his chest at Ed’s beautiful, awkward, endearing honesty.

His attempts to block out his emotions failed, however, as they did with lamentable frequency of late. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and tapped open the rhyming dictionary app he’d downloaded the other day.

 _KingOfGotham52_ :

My new friend Ed is loquacious

Sometimes his riddles are nearly flirtatious

His psychological analysis is quite audacious

But ultimately his company is bodacious

 _RiddleMeThis_ : That poem is so dreadful I truly regret every syllable of its existence.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’m going to print it out and tape it to my desk immediately

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Better print out the first stanza of An Obvious and Unmistakable Compliment to Ed as well so the poem can be complete

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Oh, that’s already on my desk.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Upon spotting it, one of my co-workers actually bothered to speak to me, if only to ask, in his usual Cro-Magnon terms, ‘what the hell is that?’

 _KingOfGotham52_ :  ‘That’ is ART

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Do you want me to come over there and beat some sense into him?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’d quite enjoy watching that actually

 _KingOfGotham52_ : It’s a date

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Except not actually of course

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Since we don’t really know each other

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Unless you want it to be?

 _KingOfGotham52_ : I’m sorry, I quite literally don’t know what I’m even saying, please ignore me

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Nonsense, I won’t ignore you. I don’t have the greatest grasp on social graces, myself, but I don’t consider it a loss. I find that that ‘lack’ manifests itself in honesty, which can be quite refreshing.

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Indeed

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Since we’re on the topic of honesty, this seems as good a time as any to ask: Did you really mean that, about my riddles being “flirtatious”?

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Depends. Do you mean them to be?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Perhaps not consciously....

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Then maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Maybe it is

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Should I listen to it?

Oswald’s fingers hovered over the screen, the dinner he’d been completely neglecting growing cold before him as he equivocated over what to answer. This felt like a serious moment where whatever the two had between them would be shaped, and he didn’t want to mess it up. And there was his answer – he didn’t want to mess it up. He _cared_. Which meant....

 _KingOfGotham52_ : Absolutely.

There was an achingly long pause while Oswald waited for a response. He finally set his phone down and picked up his fork, poking a little morosely at his perfectly done, if now rather lukewarm, steak.

The steak was once more thrown into neglect when Oswald’s phone buzzed with a reply.

RiddleMeThis: Roger dodger.

Oswald tried not to laugh out loud. What kind of ridiculous creature lay on the other end of this conversation? Frankly, Oswald couldn’t wait to find out.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I have to return to work, but I hope we can talk later?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I look forward to it.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Also: you’re still at work?? I hope you’re getting overtime.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Don’t make me laugh. I’m desperately underpaid. But I’m not here for the money, I’m here for the excitement.

Ed didn’t say anything more after that and so, as usual, he left Oswald with more questions than answers. He could only hope that tonight’s conversation would allow him to pry a few more answers out of his curious new friend.

~~~~~

As fate would have it, Ed was the first to text Oswald a few hours later, and he opened with a question of his own.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I feel I must point out that you know my name and something about what I do for a living... but I have not yet received an explicit clue as to who YOU are.

Oswald was, at the moment, presiding over an emergency meeting aimed at settling a trade dispute among the leaders of some of the bigger players in the weapons game. He really should be focusing on getting a read on the various personalities at work in the room, noting whose ego needed propping up, and who was more bluster than bite.

But for now, he was just settled casually in his high-backed chair, observing the various shouting men with disdain, waiting for them to go a bit hoarse before announcing his opinion on the matter.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ That’s because if I told you anything you’d immediately figure out who I am by using your puzzle-solving voodoo-skills

 _RiddleMeThis_ : And then I’d know too much and you’d have to kill me?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Unfortunately, yes

 _RiddleMeThis_ : So, whoever you are, you’re powerful and dangerous. I’m intrigued.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Or I’m full of it and stepping out on my wife, and don’t want you to find out

 _RiddleMeThis_ : No, you’re definitely someone of influence. And you definitely don’t have a wife.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Well, you’re right on both counts there

 _KingOfGotham52:_ You don’t seem terribly concerned though? About a threat against your life that you seem to believe I could actually carry out?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I suspect you could kill me if you wanted, yes, but you don’t have a motive.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ So?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : So, I’m not worried.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Alright then

 _RiddleMeThis_ : If you develop a motive to kill me, do let me know, however.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Will do. I’ll put a note in my calendar: ‘Let Ed know when I’m planning on having him skinned alive’

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Skinning a human being is actually quite a tricky task, our hides are too thin and they tend to get discolored quickly, decreasing their ability to be used productively

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Your message leaves me with many questions, but I think the one I’ll ask is: what would a productive use of a human pelt be?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Decoration, of course.

Oswald caught himself smiling fondly at the screen, and tried to force his mouth into something more suitable to the current, rather tense situation that he was supposed to be paying attention to (but wasn’t). However, before returning to the task at hand, he typed out a quick response.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I see a future for you in the realm of interior design.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Why thank you :)

Oswald was about to follow up with a question about Ed’s current employment situation (something Oswald was increasingly curious about) when there was a roar from the far end of the conference table and about a dozen clicks as half the people in the room flicked the safeties off their guns.

Oswald looked up from his phone for the first time in too long, taking a moment to assess the level of tension before reaching for the sawed-off shotgun he kept under his chair. Looks like they were gonna settle this dispute the old fashioned way.

~~~~~

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Morning

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Ah! Good to hear from you, I trust you’re unharmed?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ yes....why would I be harmed?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well, in our past conversations, you’ve always abided by polite conventions of greetings and goodbyes, and when you failed to reply last night I could only assume that an urgent situation had arisen. Given your aforementioned qualities of being both dangerous and powerful, I imagine ‘urgent situations’ for you could entail rather violent, even fatal, attributes. Thus, I am glad to hear that you are unharmed.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ It’s a little unsettling how quickly you put things together....

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I like it.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : :)

 _RiddleMeThis_ : So, what happened?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Short story: People. Idiots. Money problems. Corpses. New suit is stained.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Ah...

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Was it a nice suit?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ One of my BEST

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Now THAT’S a real shame

 _KingOfGotham52:_ And I don’t think the bastard who bled on it’s going to reimburse me

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Add it to his funeral expenses

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Now there’s an idea!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’m full of them

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’ll bet you are ;)

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to help?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Unless you have any tips for getting rid of a body...

 _KingOfGotham52:_ The docks are just so....blasé

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Acid to melt the flesh, then put the bones in a bag, crush them down to a powder, and incinerate the remains.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ You’ve thought about this at length before, haven’t you?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Indeed.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Is there someone in particular you’d like to get rid of? Because I’d be happy to lend a hand... ;)

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Not at the moment, though the offer is appreciated. I’ve just contemplated the issue a great deal – murder is like the most permanent kind of puzzle, isn’t it?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’d never thought about it that way.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Most people haven’t

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Tell me more

 _RiddleMeThis_ : About murder?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Sure

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’d like to hear more about the way you think about things, anything

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well, the thing about crime is that it’s a form of variable ratio reinforcement. This makes it utterly intoxicating. Addictive for many. You can rise to such great heights only to be cut down the next day, but that doesn’t stop you from going back out there – in fact, it makes you all the more hungry for success. Because psychologically, the more you lose, the more you want to risk

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Isn’t the human psyche a wild thing? Once you have a strong enough understanding of a person’s motivations, however, you can predict what they’ll do, and even guide them to a path of your choosing

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I agree with you...people are certainly more easily manipulated than they’d like to believe. But they also never cease to surprise – fundamentally, people don’t act rationally.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : How right you are. I find that people are like ‘black boxes’ as it were....you can see what goes in one end, whether that’s affection, hatred, respect, etc., and you can see what comes out the other side, kindness, selfishness, heroism, etc., and you can even fashion an algorithm to monitor the correlation of inputs and outputs and so predict reliably the consequences of a great many actions, but what goes on in the middle remains a mystery.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ The black box of the human heart.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Yes, exactly!

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Do you hope to peek inside that black box, someday?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Someday, I hope to take it apart and put it back together

 _KingOfGotham52:_ But then where would be the mystery? ;)

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’m sure the universe, in its endless wonder, would present another in due time :)

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Well, I must be off (I have a few funerals to attend to) but I’ll be thinking about this conversation all day...and looking forward to the next.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : As will I

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Until then, my friend

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Until then

 _RiddleMeThis_ : <3

~~~~~

Oswald was thinking about that heart for the rest of the morning. That little combination of characters – not even an emoji, just a damn angle bracket and the number three – haunted his thoughts, even as he tried to focus on the rather fraught territory negotiations that should be occupying his attention.

Was Ed merely referencing their conversation about the opacity of human hearts? Was it an actual symbol of affection? Was it both? Was it a riddle?

Of course it was a riddle, Oswald thought, Ed would do this just because he knows it’ll get to me.

Then he thought: since when does an anonymous chat partner know me at all?

Then: since when do I _care_ whether an anonymous chat partner knows me or not?

Then: this is what I deserve for taking relationship advice from _Gabe_.

After a lunch spent alternately agonizing over the issue and mentally berating himself for giving even a single damn about it, he finally gave in and texted Ed.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ What’s new?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : C over lambda!

 _KingOfGotham52:_ ??

 _RiddleMeThis_ : new = nu = the symbol for wavelength

 _RiddleMeThis_ : the formula to calculate wavelength is nu = c/lambda

 _KingOfGotham52:_ oh... ha ha

 _RiddleMeThis_ : ....I sense your laughter is not entirely genuine

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I sense that you are new to the art of flirting through text message

 _RiddleMeThis_ : And you, of course, are the master of digital romance

 _KingOfGotham52:_ fair

 _KingOfGotham52:_ so, you have any other sexy mathematical equations to throw at me?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well as a matter of fact...

Penguin wasn’t quite sure how to explain that he’d burst into laughter in the middle of a heated discussion about black market organ trafficking because of a naughty bit of theoretical algebra.

Nor did he have an excuse for why he kept smiling affectionately down at his phone like it had just complimented his tie.

And he certainly could offer no satisfactory account for why he grew stormier over the course of the afternoon until he snapped at one of his lieutenants, chucking a wine glass at his head and shouting apropos of nothing that the poor man was aware of, “But how could all four walls of a house face South?”

Butch, who was much brighter than just about anyone gave him credit for, quickly took the situation in hand, shuffling the lackey off to clean himself up as he cautiously suggested that if a house was built at the North pole, than all of its walls would face South.

Oswald glared up at Butch for a few seconds as he processed that, and then he was whipping out his phone and typing furiously, confirming Butch’s suspicions. Butch suppressed a sigh with difficulty, hoping that his boss’ bizarre electronic crush stopped driving the city’s most notorious criminal to distraction on a daily basis.

Alas, however, a respite was not in the cards.

The Internet quickly began to fail Oswald when it came to solving the enigmas Ed sent him on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. With his own mind and the collective mind of cyberspace exhausted, Oswald was forced to turn to those around him.

Asking Gabe what an armadillo and the Russian Revolution of 1917 have in common led only to blank stares.

Asking Butch for help was rather more successful, or at least, it was after he stopped laughing.

“Would you take this _seriously_!” Oswald hissed at a still chuckling Butch, “Or I _will_ cut your tongue out and feed it to the dogs.”

“You don’t own any dogs,” Butch pointed out calmly.

“ _I will_ _buy dogs_!” Oswald shouted back, less calmly.

“Listen, boss, I know a guy down on 31st. He runs a magic shop and is basically a human fortune cookie. He probably could help you out with your...riddle....stuff.”

Oswald squinted at Butch for a minute, before replying, “Put him on retainer. And see if _he_ knows what a water buffalo’s favorite opera is.”

Unfortunately, Oswald’s efforts to recruit help in solving Ed’s conundrums did not go unnoticed for long. One day, maybe he answered a little too quickly, or a little too confidently, and he found himself staring at a text that read:

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Did you have to get a little help on that one?

Oswald debated the merits of lying, but ultimately decided he probably wouldn’t be able to get away with it.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ ....yes.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : And the others??

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I may have hired an expert. But only recently!!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I can’t decide if I’m offended or charmed

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I would personally vote for the later

 _RiddleMeThis_ : hmmm

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You can’t touch me, yet I’m handed down... what am I? (no cheating!!!)

“Fuck,” Oswald swore under his breath, lurching up out of his chair so he could pace as he thought.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ give me a minute

Ed replied in what was decidedly less than a minute.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ ANOTHER MINUTE

Oswald actually snapped his fingers when he figured it out, diving for his phone in excitement.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ a verdict!!!

 _KingOfGotham52:_....so, you’ll let me know the verdict? On my riddle-solving crimes?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Yes

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I think the judge will be lenient however

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I must ask, would my status be forever besmirched in your eyes if, in the future, I simply admit when I’m stumped by one of your riddles?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : On the contrary, I would respect your honesty

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Then you’ll be respecting me a great deal in the future

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I look forward to it ;)

~~~~~

There were fewer riddles, from then on, and more...well, Oswald wasn’t overly familiar with the concept, but it certainly seemed to strongly resemble friendship.

Oswald told Ed not just when one of his riddles had whistled right over his head, but informed him of how his day was going, in terms he hoped were vague enough to preclude the possibility of Ed deducing just who his unidentified texting partner was.

Oswald frequently slipped in his efforts to mask his more disreputable endeavors in gentle euphemism. Fortunately, Ed didn’t bat an eye at implications of evisceration, asphyxiation, decapitation, or any of the other forms of carnage in which Oswald partook on a daily basis.

In turn, Ed openly informed him of everything from whatever stray thoughts were running through his brain to his recurring fantasies of eradicating his many vexing co-workers....

*

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I know the fact that the words inflammable and flammable are synonymous can cause confusion, but that doesn’t explain why, when one of my colleagues accidentally lit his own sleeve on fire with his cigarette, he thought pouring the contents of his flask on it would ameliorate the situation...

*

 _RiddleMeThis_ : No one would even notice if this comatose reptile of a man turned up in an alley with his skull bashed in. They’d just assume he messed up with the drug dealer everyone knows he does work on the side for

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Then why don’t you do it?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : It wouldn’t be worth it. He’s not enough of a challenge.

*

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You’re up late

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Cleaning up a mess

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Of my own making, this time

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I punished someone rather more severely than was warranted today

 _KingOfGotham52:_ But he touched a nerve and for a minute, he just looked like every gorilla that ever came after me when I was a kid

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I know exactly what you mean

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I usually managed to teach the nastiest ones a lesson, though

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Do tell

 _RiddleMeThis_ : In elementary school someone left a rude note on my desk, so I stole a stack of homework and spent hours comparing the handwriting of the note and the various students’ work until I found a match and determined the culprit. Then I stole his Oreos and replaced all the cream with mayonnaise and watched the show at snack time.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Oh my god.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Marry me.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’ll require your financial and health histories as well as a notarized pre-nuptial agreement and some more concrete evidence of your commitment (i.e. a ring of sufficient quality). Upon receipt of these items, I will consider your proposal.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ *adds items to To-Do list*

 _RiddleMeThis_ : :)

~~~~~

Oswald’s boredom had grown exponentially throughout the day as he’d not only been forced to deal with what felt like an excessively stupid cadre of jewel thieves, but he’d had to do so without Ed’s digital companionship, as there had been radio silence from his friend since the previous evening.

It was late when Oswald was finally free of the day’s obligations, and could settle down to a nice meal and a roaring fire. Naturally, he pulled out his phone and began to do his best to coerce his friend into a response.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Ed

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Edddddd

 _KingOfGotham52:_ EEDDDD

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Have you been abducted by aliens?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ If so, you should ask them to swing by and pick me up

Finally, Ed answered.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : No aliens, alas.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : But I’m in the middle of some very exciting work!

 _KingOfGotham52:_ As exciting as aliens??

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well, perhaps not QUITE that exciting, but close

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Don’t leave me on the edge of my seat!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Oh, I wish I could tell you....but I think it would rather give the game away

 _KingOfGotham52:_ What game?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Our game.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I fear I don’t know the rules to our game

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You’ll figure them out ;)

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I probably shouldn’t even be texting you now, I was called in on this before the sun was up and I’ve still got hours of lab work left

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Before dawn???? Ed do you know what time it is.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Nope.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Ah.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well...time flies when you’re having fun.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Please tell me you’ve done normal human things like feed yourself?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Well, for a given value of ‘feed yourself’...

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Ed.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Are you currently subsisting off of vending machine garbage?

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Technically, I appropriated a bag of pistachios from one of my especially brainless co-workers

 _KingOfGotham52:_ THAT DOESN’T COUNT AS FEEDING YOURSELF

 _KingOfGotham52:_ unless you’re a pigeon

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Are you secretly a pigeon? Have I been experiencing a whole new version of catfishing?

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Ed?

 _KingOfGotham52:_??

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Since you’re not replying, I can only assume that this time you have actually been abducted by aliens

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Sorry, I’m back!

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I was laughing so hard I choked on the aforementioned pistachios and it took me a while to explain to a nearby, concerned medical professional that I was not in need of her skills.

Oswald preened visibly, taking inordinate joy in the thought of that. What would Ed’s laugh sound like? he wondered.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : So, to address your earlier concerns, no. In your equation, I have not completed these ‘necessary’ and ‘human’ requirements for food consumption

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Order something. Right now. Pizza or Chinese or whatever.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I prefer my current pistachio-subsistence plan.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ I’d prefer a boyfriend who’s still alive when the sun rises tomorrow

 _RiddleMeThis_ : Boyfriend?

Oswald blinked, looked back at what he’d typed, and began to sink down in his chair, shame prickling in the back of his throat. He was a master planner, schemer, manipulator of the highest caliber, a king of crime without equal – and he’d just shown his hand so obviously he may as well have hired a skywriter to tell Ed “I’m totally gone on you!”

He messaged Ed back cautiously, hoping to control the damage.

 _KingOfGotham52:_ That was, I’ll admit, rather forward

 _RiddleMeThis_ : It was.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I liked it.

Oswald took a deep, fortifying breath and then replied, before his courage could fail

 _KingOfGotham52:_ Then you’ll love this: dinner tomorrow. Lucio’s, on the corner of Newton and 30th.

 _RiddleMeThis_ : You and me? Face to face?

 _KingOfGotham52:_   Yes.

Seconds trickled by at an agonizing pace as Oswald imagined a hundred and one ways that Ed could blow him off, but when his phone dinged and judgement arrived, all the screen read was:

 _RiddleMeThis_ : I’ll be there at 7.

~~~~~

“What’re you two doing back here?”

Gabe and Butch jumped in comedic unison at Selina’s voice, turning as one to see the kid standing in the doorway to the tiny kitchen where the two men were sequestered, her arms akimbo and eyes suspicious.

“Nothing,” Butch replied, trying and failing to keep the defensiveness out of his voice.

“Uh huh,” Selina squinted at them harder, “Cause it sure looks to me like you’re hiding out.”

“We ain’t hiding,” Gabe corrected her, “We’re just giving the boss his space.”

“Penguin has....an important meeting tonight,” Butch answered diplomatically, wary that his boss’ paranoia might extend to bugging his own kitchen. You could never be too careful around that slippery bird.

Gabe added in a stage whisper, “With a special someone.” He then added an exaggerated wink, for good measure, just in case Selina hadn’t gotten the message.

Selina had, of course, gotten the message, and was now nodding thoughtfully to herself. “Is it phone-boy?” she asked, knowingly.

Gabe and Butch nodded. “Phone-boy” was a well-known figure around the household at this point, as a text from that particular individual could make their employer smile giddily for upwards of an hour while a lack of contact could send him into an ill-tempered sulk that more often than not resulted in the removal of limbs from persons distinctly unwilling to part with them. And then _they_ got to clean up the mess.

“Finally,” Selina sighed, leaning against the doorframe, “It’s about time. But that still doesn’t explain why you two are skulking around the back of the house like a couple of kicked puppies.”

“Penguin’s starting to lose it, that’s why,” Butch explained. “Throwing things, shouting for no reason...”

“So, he’s acting exactly like he always does,” Selina pointed out, sensibly.

“Trust me, it’s worse than usual,” Butch said firmly.

“Yeah,” Gabe agreed, “Cause now he’s in his room tearing apart his closet looking for something to wear. And I’d just dry cleaned most of it.”

Selina rolled her eyes. “That’s the real problem here, the wrinkling of Penguin’s dry cleaning.”

Gabe nodded seriously, the sarcasm flying over his head with a nearly audible whistle, just as Butch’s eyes widened with an idea.

“Hey, Cat, _you_ could go talk to him, help him out with his....clothing...problems.”

“Why me?” Selina asked, suspicious.

“Because you’re, well, you know, you’re....” Butch trailed off at Selina’s increasingly murderous glare.

“If you say it’s because I’m a girl, I _will_ claw your eyes out.”

“I don’t think she’s kiddin’,” Gabe noted helpfully.

“I’m just saying,” Butch continued forcefully, “He _likes_ you. Maybe you could go in there and....calm him down a bit.”

Selina took stock of the situation for a moment, before straightening her shoulders and holding out a hand. “Twenty bucks.”

Butch blinked. “What?”

“Twenty bucks. And I’ll go smooth the ruffled bird’s feathers, get him off your backs.”

Butch stared at her incredulously for a minute longer, before going for his wallet. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”

~~~~~

“Hello?” Selina poked her head around the corner to Penguin’s room, which currently looked like a department store dressing room after an entire cheerleading team had been through it. If this department store sold bespoke suits and silk ties.

“What do you want?” Oswald shouted from the depths of his walk-in closet. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, relaxing minutely when he saw Selina’s familiar figure.

“Just here to offer moral support,” she said, stepping delicately around a pile of discarded button-downs.

“How generous,” Oswald noted, “What’s this show of friendship going to cost me?”

“Nah, you’re off the hook. Butch already paid me off.”

“Sucker,” Oswald muttered, his attention returning to his ravaged closet. “How is it that every day, I manage to successfully dress myself in a manner befitting a man of my position, and now, _today_ of all days, all of my clothing has transmogrified into appalling, tacky _garbage_?”

“I wouldn’t call it garbage,” Selina demurred, settling herself on the edge of the elegant four-poster bed. She reached into the nearest pile of clothing and rooted around for a minute before pulling free something at random and holding it out to Oswald. “Here, wear this.”

Oswald stepped towards her, taking what appeared to be rhinestone studded leather pants with some trepidation, noting distractedly, “I don’t remember purchasing these.”

“Listen, Ozzie,” Selina began, “Let’s quit pretending your problem here is with your wardrobe – which is well-stocked and the height of criminal kingpin fashion, as we both know.”

“Then do tell me, what exactly is my problem, oh wise street child?” Oswald scoffed.

“Your problem, oh idiot Penguin, is you’re nervous about going on a date with a guy you actually _like_.”

Oswald’s mouth fell open. “You–  the _nerve_ – how dare– you don’t _know_....” Oswald’s voice stuttered and failed, along with his pretense at anger, and he sank down on the bed next to Selina, his head in his hands.

“What am I doing,” he muttered into his palms.

“Going out to dinner with someone. Tons of people do it every day, it can’t be that hard.”

“That’s not– it’s not just the dinner,” Oswald tried to explain, “It’s all the other things. It’s about who I am, and who– who the hell _he_ is. For all I know, he could be an assassin sent by one of my enemies to slit my throat over dessert!”

Selina frowned at him. “Do you really think this has all been an elaborate ploy to kill you?

“Well...no.”

“Then what are you _actually_ scared of?”

Oswald looked sharply over at her, but she met his gaze without flinching. He wanted to tell her to back off, that it was none of her business. He really wanted to tell her that he wasn’t scared of anything, much less some random person on the internet who happened to be good with puzzles, and clever, and charming, and capable of making Oswald smile when it felt like there couldn’t be a reason in the whole world to do so....

Selina watched him slump slowly down as the fight went out of his thin frame. She raised a hand and hesitantly set it on his shoulder as he took a deep breath.

“What if....” Oswald almost couldn’t say it out loud, but found suddenly that he _had_ to, and admitted in a rush, “What if we finally meet, after all this time, after I’ve talked to him every day for weeks, to the point that I can’t imagine a day without him....what if he doesn’t really like me?”

“Well...then you’ll know.” Selina shrugged. “Pretty sure it’s worse _not_ to know. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, you can always kill him!” She smiled and gave his shoulder a shake. “There’s at least one perk to being the king of Gotham.”

“Yes, I suppose murder is always an option,” Oswald agreed, although the notion didn’t warm him like it usually did.

“So, that answers your other question, on what to wear.” Selina hopped off the bed and rummaged in a pile of ties thrown over a nearby armchair until she unearthed a rich green one that matched Penguin’s eyes. She brought it over and tossed it in his face with an innocent smile, concluding, “Dress to kill.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

By 6:59, Oswald had worked himself up into a good, hearty panic, and nearly convinced himself to get up and walk right out of Lucio’s. Possibly burn the place down behind him, just for good measure, because why not? There was no way this night was going to end well anyway, he might as well get an insurance pay-out over it. (He’d bought the restaurant that morning in a fit of nerves.)

And– oh, god. How was he even supposed to pick Ed out of a crowd of strangers? For all Oswald knew, he could already be here, it’s not like he’d recognize him! How had he not thought of that _earlier_?

He grabbed his cane and got to his feet from the bench where he’d been waiting with a patently false calm, and was fully ready to deep-six the whole misadventure when a voice piped up from near the doorway.

“I’m given to you at the start, I’m carved in stone at the end. You give me to many, but I only belong to you.....what am I?”

A tall, slender figure melted out of the shadows of the restaurant’s entrance. His hair was smoothed back over a high forehead, and brown eyes peered out from behind glasses so dated they’d managed to circle around back into fashion, though from the distinctly geeky state of the rest of his ensemble, hipster chic had not been his intention. His long fingers twisted together, one of a dozen obvious signs of nervousness that he was doing a terrible job of hiding. His voice had been confident as he spoke the riddle, but his lips were pressed in a tight, anxious line as he awaited an answer.

“A....a name.” Oswald flinched at the sound of his own voice, breathless with some emotion he didn’t understand as he solved the simple puzzle in an exchange just like the ones that had occurred every day for weeks through text message – but this time, it was different.

“Yes!” Ed’s eyes lit up with mischief as he added, “My name is Edward Nygma. And you are?”

“O- Oswald. Oswald C—”

“Cobblepot,” Ed finished, lips splitting into a huge grin. “I know who you are, Oswald.”

Oswald should be angry. He should at least be alarmed. He should probably leave. He should definitely get rid of this stranger who was too smart for his own good.

Oswald did none of those things. His pulse was pounding too loudly in his ears for common sense to be heard, and after a moment, he found himself whispering in a tone of outright admiration, “Of _course_ you figured it out, you _clever_ man.”

Ed glowed at the praise, like a flower opening to the sun, and Oswald was struck with how _gorgeous_ he was, with his too-wide smile and questionable haircut. Ed started to laugh, low and fast, the sound like machine gun fire echoing in a small space. It was downright disturbing.

Oswald couldn’t wait to hear it again.

“Edward Nygma,” Oswald tried the name out, getting used to the shape of it in his mouth, savoring the taste, “It is my absolute pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Ed countered, stepping closer. Oswald sucked in a breath as the other man’s height advantage became even clearer, his head barely level with Ed’s chin. He had to crane his neck to look at him properly.

Oswald could actually feel himself developing a preference for tall men as he stood there. Or, perhaps just a preference for men who were Ed.

“Your tie is lovely,” Ed noted, startling Oswald out of his brief reverie, “It brings out the green in your eyes.”

“Oh! I, uh, thank you.”

“Mm.” Ed took a step closer, even deeper into Oswald’s personal space, and they locked gazes as he continued, voice low, “Did you know green is my favorite color?”

“Excuse me, gentlemen, your table is ready.”

Ed jumped back a little at the interruption, eyes flickering around the room before settling on his own shoes. Oswald turned slowly towards the maître d’, pasting on a bland smile and hoping it hid the fact that he was wondering if anyone would notice if he stuffed the man’s corpse in the restaurant’s dumpster.

But instead of indulging that particular urge, Oswald turned back to Ed and gestured towards the restaurant’s main floor. “After you,” he said, smile turning genuine as he watched Ed fiddling with his cuffs and looking suddenly out of place.

Ed nodded jerkily and followed the waiter, Oswald trailing after him and trying to remember to breathe normally.

This was just a date, for Christ’s sake, he’d been less nervous facing the wrong end of Fish Mooney’s bat. But then again, he’d long ago given up on preserving his body’s integrity – crime didn’t allow for people afraid of bruises and scars to last long. But his heart....that was something he’d always been far more cautious to guard.

He slid into the booth across from Ed and found himself once again struck by how captivating his eyes were. They were such a deep brown, and yet there was a sharp flatness to them, something predatory and quite at odds with the shy fidgeting of their owner. Oswald supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the man behind those infinite riddles was a bit of a conundrum himself.

“I trust you’ve been well,” Oswald broke the increasingly tense silence, cringing immediately afterwards at the banality of _that_ opening salvo.

“Yes, thank you,” Ed replied stiffly, clever fingers worrying the hem of his napkin.

“So....what do you do for work? I’ve been dying to know,” Oswald admitted, reaching for his water and wishing it was something a little stronger.

“Ah...” The strained atmosphere shifted into something else, and the corner of Ed’s lip twitched upward as he replied, “You should finish that sip first.”

Oswald did so diligently. Ed leaned forward as if he was imparting a particularly juicy bit of gossip, finally admitting with a smug grin, “I work in forensics at the GCPD.”

Oswald blinked. He processed. He reminded himself to stay calm. And he immediately began to construct doomsday scenarios, escape plans, and revenge plots.

“I know how this sounds –” Ed began, but Oswald cut him off coldly.

“It _sounds_ like this might all be an elaborate setup to somehow acquire evidence against me. Which, incidentally, would constitute entrapment and therefore be unlikely to stand up in court, so –”

“So, it would be rather a lot of effort for nothing. Not that you’re not _worth_ that kind of effort.”

Ed smiled sweetly and Oswald found himself once again blinking in mild bewilderment.

“That...” he began again, slower this time but building up steam as he brushed off the confusingly warm feelings Ed’s roundabout compliment had brought on, “That doesn’t preclude the possibility that your interest in me still rests on my criminal tendencies and your own association with the forces of law and justice, thus making me a sort of forbidden fruit, as they say. And I’m not interested in being the conduit for your belated teenage rebellion.”

Oswald made as if to stand and Ed’s hand shot out, grabbing Oswald’s wrist and keeping him seated.

“Oswald...” Ed began.

“Edward,” Oswald hissed, hoping the searing glare he had aimed at his companion was effectively communicating the fact that he was about two seconds away from lopping the hand holding him down off with a steak knife.

“ _Oswald_. I’m interested in you because you’re interesting, and I’ve spent a lifetime being bored but just thinking about you is enough to make me see value in this dreary existence.”

Oswald swallowed hard. All thoughts of steak knives were gone as Ed continued in measured tones.

“Yes, I figured out who you were fairly early on. Your screenname was, frankly, a bit of a giveaway, once I began to suspect it wasn’t just arrogant bluster, but a title you’d earned. After that, the pieces were there.  I just had to put them together.

“You’re fascinating, Oswald, and...and _beautiful_.” Ed seemed shocked at himself as he finished his sentence, clamping his mouth shut as if he hadn’t met for that thought to escape.

Meanwhile, the betrayal that had been threatening to explode in Oswald’s chest morphed abruptly into affection, the change so dizzyingly quick he had to grab the edge of the booth with his free hand to steady himself.

This reminded him of the fact that his other hand was currently involved in other matters, namely, being pressed against the scratchy paper tablecloth by Ed’s now-relaxed grip.

He stared down at their joined hands for a moment more before asking, a little hesitantly, “Are you....holding my hand?”

“Yes,” Ed replied, sounding a bit surprised himself at the admission.

“Okay.” Oswald smiled, and turned his hand over so he could squeeze Ed’s.

He would have said something more, but the waiter (a different one than before; Oswald decided that the restaurant’s dumpster would just have to be a little crowded) chose that moment to swoop in.

“Hey, fellas, you had a chance to look at the menu yet?” he asked with a chipper smile.

Ed and Oswald turned to him with nearly identical venomous looks.

“We’ll need another minute,” Oswald told him in the saccharine tones he usually employed just before he sliced someone’s Achilles tendon.

The waiter apparently picked up on either Oswald’s barely camouflaged murderous intent or on Ed’s outright violent expression, and wisely chose to skedaddle.

“I’m beginning to wonder whether going out to dinner was a wise choice. All these intolerable interruptions...” Oswald closed his eyes, focusing on the feeling of Ed’s hand on his own as he reined in his anger. He couldn’t afford to cause a scene just yet, not when he had no concrete notion of Ed’s limits when it came to actual violence – would he be as sanguine about the matter if it happened in front of his eyes, rather than as mere speculation or imagination?

“It’s not your fault,” Ed assured him, “Though I was curious as to why you chose this particular establishment for our rendezvous.”

Oswald smiled as the memories of his past visits here surfaced. “My mother took me here once, on my birthday. I got free cannoli, and for that whole night, everything was perfect. That’s why I wanted to do this here, I guess I hoped that maybe it was a lucky spot.”

“You’re close to your mother, I presume?”

“Very. You?”

Ed laughed, discomfort and something darker coloring the sound as he replied, “Very much _not_.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up something –”

“Not at all. The past is the past. It’s quite alright.”

Ed didn’t look particularly alright, but Oswald figured now was not the time to pry.

In a slightly over-cheerful voice, he said, “Well, if you ever meet my mother, I’m sure she’ll adopt you on the spot.”

“Oh, now...” Ed shook his head as if to dispel such a notion, but Oswald insisted, “She will. She’ll eat you up. You’re handsome and polite and well-dressed and very much _not_ some high-heeled hussy out to corrupt me...”

Oswald trailed off abruptly, wondering if he’d said too much, but Ed’s gaze was rapt as if Oswald’s inane chatter was the most fascinating thing he’d heard in a long while.

“I’m sorry,” Oswald said automatically, “I didn’t mean to overshare –”

“That’s preposterous,” Ed cut him off gently. “I want to know everything about you, Oswald.”

“Everything? Because I feel I should warn you, a lot of it is very unpleasant.”

“Then I want to hear it all the more.”

Oswald’s breath caught in his chest, under siege from horrifically romantic emotions at the sight of Ed’s earnest gaze.

“Well...” Oswald found himself suddenly without anything to say. He struggled for a moment, grasping at straws until, “Then I can tell you that I am....a terrible artist.”

Ed looked slightly thrown for a minute, before he broke into that big glorious smile again, laughing delightedly.

“No, really, I can’t draw to save my life,” Oswald continued, thoroughly pleased with Ed’s reaction, “But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to whenever I see an untouched paper tablecloth like this one...I’d be all over it, except that those crayons,” Oswald gestured to the kids a few tables over scribbling enthusiastically around their dishes, “are meant for children.”

“Nonsense,” Ed declared, “There is no age limit on art. Shall I procure some crayons for you?”

“I am an _adult_ , Ed,” Oswald admonished him playfully, “I can steal my own crayons.”

Ed beat him to the punch, however, snagging a pack of crayons from the apron of a passing waiter.

“What light fingers you have,” Oswald intoned, leaning forward to snatch a blue crayon from Ed’s hands.

“It’s a skill I’ve been cultivating with some success,” Ed replied modestly as he selected a bright red crayon from their little stash and hunched over, writing something in his tight, neat scrawl. Oswald peered over his elbow and saw “Edward + Oswald” in a little heart, with an arrow through it.

Ed looked up, hopeful and eager, and Oswald wondered very seriously how Ed would react if Oswald just grabbed him by the collar and kissed him right then and there.

He restrained that impulse, barely, and instead just smiled hugely across the table at Ed. He was fully aware that his expression must be quite foolish, verging on totally lovestruck, but he couldn’t bring himself to care – because this man, this _incredible_ human being, just might be as foolish and lovestruck as he was.

~~~~~

Dinner progressed well after that, beginning with the waiter finally choosing a more opportune moment to arrive and take their orders, and ending with the establishment’s legendary cannoli.

Oswald slipped up a few times – most notably when he made a comment about how the last time he’d encountered cannoli it had been poisoned, and by himself no less – but each time Ed took it in stride. No social gaff took the shine off his smile, no implication of bloodshed made him blink an eye. Oswald couldn’t remember feeling this comfortable in anyone’s company outside of his mother’s in – well, possibly in his lifetime.

It was a dizzying experience, to put it mildly, and by the end of the evening, Oswald felt so high that he could bump up against the restaurant’s ceiling. If pressed, he would blame his jubilance on the wine, but to himself at least, he could be honest – he was thoroughly infatuated with one Edward Nygma.

As they walked out of the restaurant together, Oswald wondered if he could get away with holding Ed’s hand again, even for just a minute. Their impromptu hand-holding session had ended when their food arrived, and the feeling of Ed’s thin fingers, the smooth creases and callused palms, had been lingering in the back of Oswald’s mind the whole evening.

He was simultaneously trying to work up the courage to just _take Ed’s hand, dammit, it was so simple, why didn’t he just do it_ , while also trying to talk himself out of it, because _this is a first date, for god’s sake, you don’t even know if he really likes you, he could be lying, everyone else lies_....

He was so caught up in his own internal battle that it took him a minute to notice that they were standing on the sidewalk outside, and that Ed was staring down at him.

The look in his eyes was so focused, so intense, so _serious,_ Oswald was certain he was about to either announce that he hated Oswald and never wanted to see him again, or that he hated Oswald and was going to _kill_ him for being so hateful.

As it turned out, Oswald’s abrupt switch into panic mode hadn’t allowed for the existence of a third option. Namely, that Ed would reach out solemnly to take Oswald’s face in his hands, lean down, and kiss him with more tenderness than Oswald had experienced in most of his life.

Ed pulled away far too quickly, before Oswald could even close his eyes or fall into the moment.

“Oh my –” Ed’s voice was choked and his hands flew away from Oswald’s face like he’d been scalded. “I’m sorry, I’m _very_ sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep, I just thought – well, no, actually I didn’t _think_ very much, I just wanted and–”

It didn’t look like Ed’s panicked babbling was going to stop on its own, so Oswald took matters into his own hands.

“Don’t apologize,” Oswald told him fervently, before grabbing him by the tie and dragging him back down.

This kiss was _not_ tender, it was fierce; Oswald’s free hand flew up to pull Ed’s face tighter to his while Ed’s hands scrambled for a moment before fisting into the back of Oswald’s jacket, pressing their chests together. Oswald broke away for a second to pant against Ed’s lips and Ed took the opportunity to adjust their angle, and then their mouths were locked together again and Oswald finally figured out why the hell it was that so many people wasted hours and hours of their days kissing people because _god_ it was not a waste of time at _all_.

Ed began to tug at Oswald’s bottom lip, just a hint of teeth coming into play, before his tongue swiped across Oswald’s mouth. Oswald gasped at the touch, too caught up in Ed’s heat to even be embarrassed about the noise, and then dived in further, welcoming Ed inside and doing some hesitant exploration of his own.

He would have happily stood forever on that gum-encrusted sidewalk with old newspapers and winos drifting by as he and Ed held each other in their own little world. However, that was not what fate had in mind for him that night, and the two’s embrace was rudely disrupted by the insistent trill of Oswald’s cell phone.

As Ed broke their kiss with a startled “oh!” Oswald’s first instinct was to throw the ringing phone into the path of an oncoming bus, and then pick up where he and Ed left off. Unfortunately, he was the king of the criminal underworld, and if one of his lackeys was calling his private number after he’d specifically warned them not to do so, on threat of dismemberment, then it was probably something important.

“At least _three people_ better be dead for you to think you can interrupt me right now and escape with all your limbs attached,” Oswald hissed into the speaker without preamble.

“I’m real sorry boss –” Gunfire blasted out of the speaker, cutting off Gabe’s apologetic tones. There was the rat-tat-tat of return fire and then Gabe was back on the line, “But we need your, uh, diplomatic touch over here.”

Oswald sighed and listened to Gabe rattle off some more relevant information and an address before hanging up on him and sending off a text to his driver to come pick him up.

He looked up from his phone just in time to see Ed’s features shift from disappointment into studied neutrality. Oswald decided in that moment that whoever’d been the cause of this disruption was definitely going to be made an example of. With thumbscrews, possibly.

“I’m so _terribly_ sorry, Ed, I –”

“No, please,” Ed’s eyes were fixed on the ground as he held up a hand to stop Oswald, “Don’t apologize. What you do is very important, and I wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

“Get in my– Ed, you’re the furthest thing from ‘getting in my way’, you’re– you’re –” Words failed Oswald, and so he decided he’d really better just kiss Ed again, which he promptly did.

It was worth it for Ed’s surprised little squeak alone, and doubly so when he leaned into the touch with a contented sigh.

Oswald pulled back just enough to whisper, “I don’t want to be anywhere else but here.”

A lovely pink blush spread across Ed’s cheeks at Oswald’s words, only deepening as he replied, “I feel the same.”

Oswald’s decision to go and assist his hapless goons seemed less and less appealing in light of how perfect Ed looked in the golden streetlight. “Maybe I should just let my people deal with their own problems,” Oswald mused, “If they die, they die, they’re idiots anyway. It’s no great loss.”

Ed smiled softly down at him like that was the sweetest sentiment he’d ever heard.

“As tempted as I am to encourage that course of action, I must restrain myself, for I will survive just fine on my own, but your criminal empire needs you.” He brushed a last kiss against Oswald’s lips before taking a step back, “You can see me anytime. Say, tomorrow?”

Oswald beamed up at him. “Absolutely, I’d love to.”

“Excellent! How about dinner at my place, at 7? I like to cook,” Ed explained with a shy smile.

“Just when I think you couldn’t get any more perfect...” Oswald said, returning Ed’s smile coyly.

Ed’s retreating blush resurfaced just as Oswald’s car rounded the corner, rolling to a stop a discreet distance away.

Oswald sighed, signaling to his driver to wait a minute before turning back to Ed. “Before I leave, here’s my actual cell number.” Oswald handed Ed a slip of paper. “No need to use that silly app anymore.”

“It may be silly, but it will always hold a special place in my heart for bringing us together.” Ed smiled down at him, and he looked so warm and inviting Oswald was once again tempted to say to hell with his men, his empire, his everything, just to spend another minute here.

But, a strong breeze bearing Gotham’s signature mix of garbage and despair brought him back to his senses, and he took a step towards the waiting car.

“Text me when you get home, so I know you’re safe!” he called towards Ed as his driver opened the door for him.

“Certainly! And the same to you!” Ed replied, waving goodbye as Oswald finally collapsed into the car.

He snapped at the driver to head for the address Gabe had given him and then stared out the window, watching Ed’s dark silhouette until it melted into the rest of the city’s shadows.

~~~~~

E: I know we’ve been texting for weeks, but this feels so different now that I have a face to put to your name.

E: Well, technically, I’d seen your photo in the paper, but you’re far more handsome in person.

E: This is Ed, by the way.

O: I assumed so ;)

O: No one else is as charming as you

E: :)

E: How did the rest of your evening go?

O: Well enough.

O: The fish in Gotham bay are eating well tonight, anyway

O: Also, I feel I should inform you that I’ve put your number in my phone under “Mr. E” and I’m quite pleased with that bit of wordplay.

E: <3

E: Am I a “mystery” to you, Oswald?

O: Somewhat. But I hope to have a chance to figure you out...

E: You’ll have that chance indeed, Mr. Penguin

E: Mr. P! That’s what you’ll be in my phone. Then we’ll match.

O: <3

~~~~~

“You’re glowin’ boss,” Gabe declared with a pleased smile as Oswald fixed his hair in front of the hallway mirror for the millionth time, “You’re gonna blow your gentleman friend’s socks off.”

“Please, never call Ed my ‘gentleman friend’ ever again,” Oswald rebuked him without much venom since he was, in fact, glowing with excitement. Within half an hour he was going to see Ed again, and with that fact warming his heart there really wasn’t anything that could dampen his spirits.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive ya?” Gabe asked as Oswald began marching towards the door.

“No, no, I’ll be fine on my own,” Oswald dismissed him with a wave of his hand. Part of him just wanted to keep this thing with Ed between the two of them, with as little interference from thick-skulled henchmen as possible. Another part of him rather hoped he wouldn’t need a ride home until morning, in which case he definitely didn’t need any thick-skulled henchmen loitering about waiting for him.

He opened the door but swung back around to fix Gabe with a fierce glare as he reminded him, “Now, _do not_ call me unless this entire operation is about to implode. If you interrupt my evening for anything less than an _apocalyptic_ event, I will not be held responsible for my actions. Do you understand?”

“Gotcha boss, no interruptions. Have a good time!” Gabe waved good-naturedly and Oswald just rolled his eyes, slamming the door behind him.

His nerves started to rise on the drive to Ed’s, but he kept them at bay by focusing on the way Ed had looked at him the night before, the way he’d said “I feel the same,” the way his mouth had felt against his own...he also had to periodically remind himself to pay attention to the road, or he’d end up wrapped around a lamppost.

After what felt like an interminable drive, but which was probably no more than twenty minutes, he arrived at the address Ed had texted him earlier. He found a parking space in a matter of seconds, which he chose to interpret as a sign of good fortune, and went into the building. He obsessively checked the apartment numbers against the address on his phone until he found himself facing a large sliding metal door. After a fortifying breath and a brief mental pep talk, he raised his fist and knocked on the door.

A few heartbeats later, the door was dragged open to reveal Ed’s widely grinning face.

“Hi!” he greeted Oswald, nearly vibrating with excitement.

“Hi,” Oswald replied, suddenly finding himself a little breathless, just like last time – apparently that was the effect Ed had on him.

“Please, come in,” Ed pulled the door open further and stepped aside, waving Oswald over the threshold.

The room was dark, lit mostly by a soft green glow that seeped in from the neon sign that shone outside the windows. A few candles flickered on a small table set against the far wall, and a tantalizing, savory smell wafted in from the little kitchen area. Oswald stepped further into the apartment, taking note of the many oddities of the room, such as the flashbulb studded arrow that looked like it had been ripped off a vintage drive-in movie theater sign and the old record player currently crooning out a scratchy bit of jazz. It might look messy to the untrained eye, but there was a certain order to it if you looked hard enough. And it was just so... _Ed_. Oswald loved it.

What preoccupied his attention the most, however, was the bed with a checkered quilt to the right of the door. Oswald hadn’t exactly come with the purest of intentions but now his mind was firmly ensconced in the gutter.

As such, when Ed suddenly asked, “So, are you hungry?” It took Oswald a solid ten seconds to come up with something to say that wouldn’t sound like the world’s cheesiest double entendre.

“I– I am, uh, yes. I am...that would be...yes.” He nodded a little wildly, but Ed just smiled, a small quirk of his lips, and Oswald finally started to settle comfortably into the moment. This was fine, this was good, this was just him and a wonderful man who not only tolerated Oswald’s unique personality but _enjoyed_ it.

“Please, sit down.” Ed skipped over to the table and pulled a chair out. Oswald sat in it as Ed dashed over to the kitchen, returning with plates of artfully arranged salad. He filled glasses shaped like beakers with wine, and fidgeted with the little flower arrangement tucked between the flickering candles before sitting, showing the first signs of nerves since Oswald had arrived. Oswald gathered his courage, and reached across the table to take Ed’s hand and give it a comforting squeeze.

“This looks wonderful, Ed. Thank you for inviting me here, you have a beautiful home.”

Ed smiled again, that big gorgeous smile that didn’t hold anything back, and Oswald wondered how soft he was going that he thought his heart might actually be melting at the sight.

Ed ran his thumb along Oswald’s fingers, the touch sparking a jolt down his spine. “You are so very welcome.”

With a shy reluctance, their hands parted so they could reach for their forks.

Ed cleared his throat, and began to speak animatedly, “I’ve got several courses planned for tonight, I like to cook, you see....”

Ed launched into a detailed explanation of the meal they were about to embark on, complete with a history of not only of his personal acquisition of the ingredients, but of their introduction to the North American continent generally. Oswald decided that it didn’t really matter what the content of Ed’s words was, not when it was so fascinating to watch how expressive his hands were, flying over the table with the elegance of a pianist.

It was so easy to talk to Ed, not just because the man was perfectly willing to speak at great length about any topic and so fill any awkward silences when Oswald dropped the conversational ball, but because Oswald didn’t have to monitor himself around him. He could talk about work in all its messy detail as easily as he could talk about his opinion on the latest exhibit at the Gotham Museum. He could talk about his struggles, his hopes, his dreams, his fears; he could talk about how the combined intelligence of every criminal in his employ could fit in a thimble, and one of these days he was going to load them up on a boat and send them out to sea with a bomb below deck – on that last thought, Edward had some very helpful suggestions.

Ed finished up explaining how Oswald could in fact deal with some of his problems with distribution and management on the east side (with Oswald taking rigorous mental notes) and cleared away the plates from their last course, a really delightful mushroom risotto.

“So, found any good corpses lately?” Oswald asked conversationally as Ed settled back in his chair.

“Oh, _yes_. I got to work a fantastic crime scene last week; Caucasian male, mid-thirties, brown hair and _all the bones excised from his legs_.” Ed sighed contentedly, eyes glazing over as he relived his examination of the remains in his mind. “It was, frankly, a beautiful job. A gorgeous mess, and so unique. They’d _all_ been removed, the femur, patella, tibia, fibula, all cut out, with something rusty and serrated. And I think he was awake for that part. It was all just fascinating and – why are you smiling like that?” Ed pulled up short mid-story at Oswald’s expression.

“I’m sorry, it’s just...” Oswald leaned forward like he was sharing a juicy secret as he admitted, “That was one of mine!”

“ _No_.” Ed’s eyes went huge with delight and Oswald nodded happily.

“Yes! It turned out he’d been running guns for Tommy Bones on the side without giving me my cut, so, well. It seemed only appropriate I take some _bones_ as retribution.”

They broke into laughter at the same time, the sound gaining intensity until they were nearly hysterical, giggling and snorting inelegantly and clutching the table to keep from falling out of their chairs. It wasn’t so much that it was _that_ funny, it was just the intoxication of each other’s company. If Oswald had known cutting that two-timer’s bones out would bring them this much joy, he wouldn’t have limited himself to the man’s legs.

“Oh, Oswald,” Ed wiped a tear from his eye as their laughter died down, “You are just _delicious_.”

The air felt like it had been sucked out of the room as they both seemed to realize what Ed had said at the same time. Ed’s reaction was to stare suddenly down at the tablecloth, while Oswald’s mouth fell open slightly.

Before he could reply, however, Ed’s head popped back up and he asked with forced cheer, “So, do you have room for dessert?”

But Oswald wouldn’t be so easily deterred. This is your moment, he counseled himself. Don’t be a coward – _seize the day_.

Oswald stood, making an effort to hide how suddenly unsteady he felt on his feet as he moved slowly around the table to stand in front of Ed.

“Maybe we could have dessert...afterwards.”

Ed’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and Oswald took it as an invitation to lean forward and press their lips together, tentatively at first, but then more deeply when Ed began to respond with enthusiasm. After a minute Oswald had to pull away, an involuntary noise of discomfort slipping from him as his leg twinged in disapproval at the awkward angle of their embrace.

“Come here,” Ed breathed, pulling Oswald forward by his hips until he half-fell onto Ed’s chest, straddling him. Ed’s hands drifted down to his thighs, squeezing gently, and Oswald dived forward again, capturing Ed’s mouth fiercely while he buried his hands in his hair.

A few minutes later, Ed was the one to pull away, his lips kiss-reddened and glasses askew.

“Oswald, before we....there’s just....there’s something I have to tell you. Before we go further, you should know....after all, a similar admission quite upset her and I don’t need a rerun of that particular episode –”

Oswald waved a hand to cut off Ed’s wandering monologue, “What are you talking about?”

Ed straightened his shoulders and replied clearly, “I killed my girlfriend.”

Oswald truly didn’t know how to respond to that, so he tried to keep his face neutral as Ed continued. “It was an accident, I didn’t mean to do it, but she reacted rather badly when I told her that I’d killed her last boyfriend – I _had_ to kill him, because he was hurting her, you see, and I couldn’t allow that – but then she called me terrible names and hit me and I just grabbed her, and before I knew it, she was dead.”

Ed finished as his breath seemed to leave him, and his eyes flicked up to meet Oswald’s.

Oswald lifted his hand and slowly traced it over the line of Ed’s cheekbone, watching how his eyelashes fluttered at the barely-there touch.

How had some stupid person turned _this_ down, this beautiful man, someone so devoted he’d take a life for them. Who would throw away a gift like that?

“I’m glad,” Oswald said out loud as his brain came to that conclusion.

Ed’s eyebrows pulled together in confusion, and Oswald hastened to explain, “I mean, I kind of figured you _wanted_ to kill someone, with the things you’ve said...but I’m glad to hear that it wasn’t just empty talk. And I’m especially glad that you killed her because if you hadn’t, you might be off planning a honeymoon with her rather than sitting here with me and that would be...intolerable.”

Something fast and indecipherable flew across Ed’s face, before it settled into a sort of ferocious awe. “You are _incredible_ ,” he murmured, voice low and reverent.

Oswald smiled, small and soft before leaning forward to brush their mouths together as he replied, “You dazzle me, Edward Nygma.”

~~~~~

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

“What the _hell_...” Oswald groaned, dragging a pillow over his head in the vain hope that it would drown out that godforsaken noise. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Ed apologized in sleep-scratchy tones, scrambling to shut off the blaring alarm clock. 

Oswald sighed in relief as silence once again fell in the room, only broken by the soft buzz of the sign outside and Ed’s gentle breathing next to his. Well, less gentle now that he’d been jolted into consciousness.

“I guess you protectors of the law get up early,” Oswald mumbled, burrowing deeper under the covers.

“Excuse you,” Ed said in mock offense, “I am a _murderer_ , and as such, don't even qualify as law-abiding much less law- _protecting_.”

“I do apologize,” Oswald murmured seriously into his pillow, “I never meant to insinuate such a thing. You are a dangerous, law-breaking criminal.” He smiled sleepily, still not opening his eyes, "and such an attractive one."

Ed giggled and leaned in to snuggle against Oswald’s side.

“I’ve got a riddle for you,” he whispered, lips brushing against Oswald’s cheek.

“Mmm...”

“What loses its head in the morning, but regains it at night?”

“Umm.....a....a dog...”

“No.”

“A cat.”

“Nope. A hint: the answer is not a common household pet.”

“Ok.” Oswald pretended to think about it for a minute, “A hamster.”

"You're not even trying now," Ed laughed. 

"No," Oswald admitted easily, "That's partially because I'm still half asleep but mostly because you prefer when people _don't_ know the answer to your riddles."

Ed was thoughtful for a moment before answering, slowly, "That's true..." He was quiet for a while, almost long enough for Oswald to drift off again, before adding softly, "You know me so well.”

At that, Oswald finally scraped together the energy to open his eyes and smile up at Ed, "I like to think so. It's a privilege."

Ed grinned, all white teeth and bright eyes, and Oswald thanked the god he was beginning to think didn't hate him personally that he'd met this utterly incredible, unfathomable man –

“Do you want to know the answer?”

“What?” Oswald blinked, “Oh, yes.”

“It’s a pillow,” Ed told him with an eager grin, before snatching the pillow out from under Oswald’s head.

Oswald gasped and flailed a little, grabbing at Ed who held the pillow out of his reach, laughter echoing around the apartment. The tussle quickly escalated into a pseudo-wrestling match, which quickly devolved into something rather sexier as Oswald found himself on top of Ed, panting against his mouth. Kissing Ed just seemed like the next natural step, and before long they were tangled in each other, hands in hair and skin sliding and the whole outside world fading away like background music.  

“We’d better stop,” Oswald mumbled as Ed nipped at his jaw, “or you’ll be late for work.”

“Hmmm... or maybe I should call in sick....” Ed coughed the world’s most unconvincing fake cough.

Oswald shook his head with a smile, “No, I insist. You haven’t kept me from my work, I mustn’t keep you from yours.”

“But your work is so much _better_.”

“I think your colleagues would disagree,” Oswald pointed out lightly.

“They’re all idiots,” Ed waved a hand dismissively, “They don’t know what it’s like to have _real_ fun.”

“Well, then perhaps you’ll join me someday.” Oswald tried to make the offer sound casual and light, but his heartrate picked up as he waited for Ed’s reaction.

Ed’s reaction was first to freeze, and then tilt his head curiously to the side before his eyes widened with dawning comprehension.

“Join you?” he asked, tone a dense mix of emotions that Oswald couldn’t sort through, “Are you being serious?”

“I am,” Oswald replied cautiously, hoping he hadn’t insulted Ed somehow.

“But really.... _serious_ about _me_ joining _you_?” Ed’s brow was furrowed as if he was struggling to grasp the concept, and Oswald started to realize that the problem here wasn’t that Ed thought he was too good for crime, but that he wasn’t good _enough_.

“Absolutely.” Oswald gently ran a hand through Ed’s messy curls, maintaining eye contact as he did his best to communicate just how serious he truly was. “You’re the single most brilliant mind I’ve ever encountered...what sort of self-respecting crimelord would I be if I didn’t take every opportunity to try and convert you to the dark side?” Oswald tried for a flirtatious grin, hoping he hit the mark.

Apparently he did, or Ed just really liked what Oswald had to say, because the next moment he was grabbing Oswald’s face with both hands and kissing him breathless, pushing him back down onto the bed and clambering on top of him with dark intent in his eyes.

“I propose a compromise,” Ed murmured against Oswald’s jaw, “Today, I’ll be _late_ for work.”

~~~~~

“I’m bored,” Harvey announced.

“Read the paper,” Jim suggested, holding the Sports section out to his partner without looking at him.

“I forgot my glasses.”

Jim made a sympathetic noise, and turned a page.

“How can _we_ have nothing to do?” Harvey grumbled, “I mean, this is _Gotham_. And no one’s died in the last...” Harvey glanced up at the clock, “ _two hours_. What the hell’s up with that? Something’s not right.”

“Can’t you just sit back and enjoy a moment of peace?”

Harvey thought about it for a minute before shaking his head. “No.”

“Please go bother someone else,” Jim sighed, trying not to lose his place in the paper’s tiny print.

“Who else am I supposed to bother?” Harvey asked, petulant.

Jim spared a glance around the room, concluding after a brief sweep, “Go bother Ed.”

Harvey turned and spotted the gangly forensics expert wandering dreamily into the precinct, looking vaguely up into the rafters with a contented smile on his face.

Harvey was about to make a remark about how he’d rather go and increase Gotham’s murder rate himself (through becoming a victim of or committing murder, he hadn’t decided yet) than make small talk with _Nygma_ , of all people, when his brain decided to catch up with his eyes and inform him of what Ed’s particular dreamy expression most likely meant.

“Oh, God, why do I have to be so damn perceptive,” Harvey lamented, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Harvey,” Jim chuckled, “you’ve been accused of being many things, but _perceptive_?”

“Watch it, Gordon.”

“Fine. What is it that you’re ‘perceiving’?”

“Nygma’s face. I know it.”

“Well, he has worked here for a few years now....”

“That’s not what I mean, smartass. What I mean is I recognize the expression – it is of a man who’s gotten laid, and well.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Oh_.”

“There are things I didn’t need to see in my mind’s eye,” Harvey grimaced, tracking Ed’s progress across the station floor, “That was one of them.”

“And you shared it with me. I’m honored.”

“Misery loves company.”

“Ah, buck up,” Jim shook his head, doing his best to dislodge any errant mental imagery about the department CSI, “He deserves it, right? He’s been alone for a long time.”

“Try, _forever_. I mean, what kinda gal would want to go out with _him_?”

“Be nice, Harvey.”

“Never.” As if to prove that point, Harvey chose to throw a hand out and wave as he shouted, “Hey, Nygma!”

Ed turned with a jump towards the summons. As he approached their desks, his curious expression turned instantly suspicious.

“Yes, detective?” he asked cautiously, hands twitching anxiously at his sides.

“What do you mean by coming in at this hour?” Harvey asked, tone full of disapproval. Jim shook out his paper and rolled his eyes at Harvey’s theatrics.

“I intended no meaning whatsoever, I merely...overslept.” Ed’s pause before that last word was noticeable, as was the way his eyes searched the room as if he hoped an excuse would materialize from the brick walls.

Harvey dropped his judgmental look in favor of a leer. “Oh, really?”

“Um, yes, really...” Ed replied, but it sounded more like a question than a confirmation.

“Alright, c’mon, Ed,” Harvey goaded him, “Who is she?”

Ed blinked, looking honestly confused. “Who is who?”

“The lucky girl,” Harvey prompted.

“What lucky girl?”

“Whatever lucky girl has won your heart. Or other parts of you, anyway.”

Jim cringed, Harvey smirked, and Ed blinked again.

“I assure you, there is no woman in my life.” Ed took a hesitant step back. “And, as you pointed out, Detective, I’m running a bit behind, so if you’d excuse me...” Ed nodded briefly at the two of them before skittering away down to his lab.

“He’s lying,” Harvey declared once Ed had turned the corner.

“Or you don’t know how to read body language as well as you think you do,” Jim countered.

“Nope. Ed’s definitely hiding something.”

“Mmm.”

“Don’t you care?” Harvey demanded to know, rounding on Jim.

“I don’t, actually,” Jim answered idly.

“Well _I_ do. And I’m gonna find out what it is he’s not telling us.”

“Uh-uh.”

“I’m gonna make it my _mission_.”

“Your new mission in life is to invade our co-worker’s privacy?” Jim raised an eyebrow at Harvey over the business section.

“Yes.”

“A co-worker you literally could not have cared less about two minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

“Have fun with that.”

“I will,” Harvey said defiantly. He deflated a moment later, however, when it appeared he still hadn’t won Jim’s attention back. “Come on, tell me you’re not even a _little_ curious,” he wheedled.

“I’m not even a little curious,” Jim shot back without hesitation.

“C’mon man! He could be having some sort of torrid affair with a married woman. Or maybe it’s not about a girl at all, maybe he’s mixed up in some shady, back alley deal....”

Harvey would’ve continued, but he was distracted by the sight of a rookie (i.e. someone who hadn’t yet developed Harvey Senses™ to keep any baked goods he may be handling far away from the detective) bringing in a box of crullers, and suddenly, Ed’s love life seemed much less interesting.

So, naturally, as Harvey made his way down to the unsuspecting officer and his soon-to-be-absent pastries, Jim’s eyes lost their focus on the words before him and he started to think about when the last time Ed had come in late was – it was _never_. Ed was notoriously punctual. And, hadn’t he still been pining for the MIA Kristen Kringle?

Finally setting his paper aside, Jim narrowed his eyes in the general direction of Ed’s lab.

“If he _doesn’t_ have a girlfriend, then why’s he late?” Jim wondered out loud as Harvey flopped back down in his desk chair.

“Oh, sure, _now_ you care...” Harvey grumbled through a mouthful of donut.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just... he _has_ been acting strange ever since Kristen disappeared and –” Jim cut himself off mid-sentence as he finally caught on to Ed’s particular phrasing when he rebutted Harvey’s accusation.

“Hey, Harvey?”

“Yeah?”

“Ed said there wasn’t a woman in his life.”

“Yeah.”

“Think about that for a minute.”

Harvey did. And continued to stare blankly at Jim. Jim sighed, and said again, with emphasis, “No _woman_.”

Jim could see the moment the penny dropped.

“ _Ohhh_....” Harvey nodded slowly, looking disappointed as he licked sugar off his fingers. “Well, that’s a lot less exciting than I’d hoped for.”

“Yeah. I mean, did we really think _Ed_ was going to be involved in some sort of wild affair?”

“Now that you put it that way, it seems ridiculous.”

Harvey sighed as he watched Jim reach for his paper again, and finally relented in the face of unending boredom: “Alright, Jimbo, hand me the comics.”

~~~~~

Oswald was nervous the first time he brought Ed back to his – for lack of a less dramatic word – lair. Sure, he’d given Gabe and Butch a long talk entitled Keep My Boyfriend Safe or You’ll Wish for Death, but that didn’t mean that his base wasn’t frequented by scoundrels and thieves who wouldn’t blink at carving up a shy, gentle-seeming man like Ed. And although Ed was reasonably handy with the switchblade he carried in his pocket, Oswald really didn’t want him to have to use it.

As such, Oswald brought Ed in through the building’s least trafficked back-entrance and enlisted Gabe in making sure their path to the main room was clear. No need for some random grifter to spot Ed and recognize him from a stint in the GCPD’s lock-up, after all.

But Oswald needn’t have worried, as his criminal haunt was deserted so early in the evening – his crowd tended to follow rather vampiric sleep schedules. Ed made appropriately appreciative comments on the dark grandeur of the main hall, running a finger along the edge of the long table as he imagined the scenes that had transpired among these high-backed chairs and wax-soaked candelabras.

“You have a magnificent home, Oswald,” Ed told him.

“Well, ‘home’ is a rather generous term,” Oswald admitted. “It’s my base of operations and a place to rest – but little more.”

Ed nodded, sympathetic. “But,” Oswald grinned, taking Ed’s hand and leading him to the wall to the right of the fireplace. He reached out and felt along the edges of a gilt frame hanging there, tracing the pattern until he found what he was looking for. There was a soft click, and then the entire wall, complete with the painting hanging on it and the sideboard affixed to the front of it, swung quietly forward to reveal a small passage.

Ed gasped quietly, letting go of Oswald as his hands flew up to his face in excitement. He tiptoed forward like a kid on Christmas morning, eyes shining with excitement as he stepped into the secret passage.

“Constructed during Prohibition, correct?” he asked, rapping his knuckles experimentally against the wood paneled interior of the little room behind the wall.

“Indeed,” Oswald confirmed, following Ed inside. “There are several of these little hidey-holes throughout the building, most of them connected through a tunnel system.” Oswald gestured towards a shadowed doorway at the back of the room. “I was sold on the place as soon as I found out. I mean, what’s the point in having a spooky old lair without a few hidden passageways, am I right?”

Ed nodded his agreement as he investigated the perimeter of the space, prodding the walls curiously and tapping the toe of his shoe on the concrete floor.

“And best of all,” Oswald continued, “only two – three, now – people in the world know these exist. The man who sold me the place had discovered them, of course, but we disposed of him after making sure he hadn’t spilled his secrets to anyone else. So now it’s only Butch, me...and you.”

Oswald forced himself not to shuffle anxiously as he waited for Ed to respond. It took Ed a minute; he was transfixed by the dusty wood and miscellaneous bric-a-brac left behind by the previous tenants nearly a century ago. But Oswald could tell the moment the weight of this secret hit him, as he turned to look at Oswald with wide eyes.

“I– Oswald...thank you. It means a great deal that you would share this with me.”

Oswald nodded and smiled a little weakly, his pulse speeding up with anxiety. Honesty wasn’t his strong suit, generally, but for some reason a spring of earnest candor had been tapped in his heart, and he replied in a rush, “I don’t want to have any secrets from you, Ed. Secrets always... _ruin_ things. And I just, I want – I want to do this right. As right as someone like me can do anything.”

Ed’s mouth had slowly fallen open as Oswald spoke, caught somewhere between shock and wanting to say something. His hands twitched forward before rearing back, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do with them. Ultimately, he settled on grabbing Oswald by the lapels and pulling him in for a searing kiss. (Oswald thought this was definitely the right choice.) Too soon he pulled away, but only far enough to ask, “If I close this door, we won’t be locked in, right?”

“Right.”

“Good,” Ed reached out to drag the door to the secret room shut, and Oswald leaned forward as well to unlatch a small wooden slat, letting weak light stream through the opening so they wouldn’t be engulfed in darkness. Ed ducked forward to inspect the window of sorts more closely, utterly sidetracked.

“Oh! It looks through the painting...the canvas must be of a wider weave than usual...” Ed trailed off, muttering mostly to himself as examined the texture of the painting-peephole material.

Oswald sighed affectionately at the sight, and Ed spun back around at the sound.

“Ah, sorry. Distracted,” he apologized. “Where was I?” Ed’s grin turned predatory and Oswald felt a delightful shiver run down his spine at the sight.

“You were about here...” Oswald took one of Ed’s hands and guided it to his hip, letting it slip dangerously low. “And....here,” Oswald took Ed’s other hand and brought it to his cheek, nuzzling Ed’s palm.

“Now I remember,” Ed murmured before leaning in, capturing Oswald’s mouth.

They were interrupted all too soon by the sound of Gabe lumbering through the lair’s halls, calling for Oswald.

“Boss?” Gabe’s voice was muffled, coming from the other side of the false wall as he stuck his head into the main hall. “You in here? One of the Duke’s guys is outside, says he needs your help...”

Oswald look of borderline homicidal irritation morphed unexpectedly into a smirk. He leaned up to murmur in Ed’s ear, “Watch this,” before ducking out through the back exit of the room. Ed watched his shape melt into darkness, confused for a moment before turning his attention back to the room where Gabe was peeking around chairs as if his employer might be hiding underneath one of them.

“What is it?” came Oswald’s voice from the shadows behind Gabe.

“Whoa!” Gabe startled, almost knocking over a nearby candelabra. “Oh, it’s you, boss. How d’you always do that, come outta nowhere...”

“That’s for me to know and you to not bother wasting brain cells worrying about,” Oswald replied sharply, moving to settle himself in the chair at the head of the table. “Now, send in the Duke’s man.”

Gabe retrieved a slimy looking guy with a receding hairline and a cheap suit.

“And what can I do for you today, Mister...?” Oswald asked, the picture of polite disinterest.

“Davies. I’m here from the Duke. He’d like your help in smoothing out some...issues we’re havin’.”

“And what dispute needs arbitrating today?”

“The boss has been havin’ trouble with the Jones Crew. They’re trying to lock down a whole chunk a’ the docks where the Duke does his business, and things have been getting a little.... _messy_ , lately. All these cops and bodies, it’s no good for business. The boss wants things to calm down again.”

Oswald thought about Ed watching from the secret room, and his smirk grew.

“Well, my friend,” Oswald’s tone was pleasant but his eyes were cold as he folded his hands on the table in front of him, “If I’m going to do this for the Duke, I’m going to need something in return. So, whatever agreement I help your employer reach with his opponents, I get, say...a twenty percent cut from his renewed business transactions. Indefinitely.”

“ _Twenty_ – are you– you gotta be kidding me.”

Oswald’s smile grew and it was more terrifying than any scowl or brandished weapon.

“On the contrary, I think that’s quite a reasonable request given that if this conflict were to continue, the Duke’s waterfront operations might be shut down permanently, when the GCPD finally intervenes or when all his men are dead.”

Davies didn’t look convinced, so Oswald added in saccharine tones, “It would be such a _shame_ if the Jones crew came to find out about that weapons cache your boss has got hidden away on Fifth. Or that safe-house he maintains by the old bridge in Uptown.”

Davies paled. “How- how do you know –”

“It’s best for you to assume that I know _everything_.”

Davies gulped, tugging at his collar. “Ok. Ok, I....I’m sure the boss will think a twenty percent cut is...is plenty reasonable.”

“I’m sure he will,” Oswald agreed, leaning back in his chair, “After you explain the situation to him.”

“Right....right...” Davies stood, looking eager to take his leave.

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Oswald said pointedly.

“Yes, uh, thank you, Mr. Penguin. Thank you,” Davies sputtered, before dashing away.

The pitter patter of his nervous feet had hardly faded before Ed was throwing open the fake wall and stepping out, eyes alight.

“You were _exquisite_ , Oswald,” Ed breathed.

“Really?” Oswald puffed up at the praise. “You liked it?”

Ed nodded slowly, moving closer with dark intent in his eyes. He reached out, closing his fist in the front of Oswald’s shirt and pulling him tight to his chest so he deposited his next words on Oswald’s lips, “Let me show you _exactly_ how much I liked it...” He started to drag Oswald backwards into the secret room, and Oswald went willingly, if a little clumsily, tripping over his own feet in a haze of sudden desire. The door slammed shut behind them, and then there was another thud as Oswald was pressed up against it.

Gabe, who was walking by, heard the rattling of the walls and concluded morosely, “I knew this place had rats.”

~~~~~

A good while later, the two finally stumbled back out of the secret passage, both a little more rumpled than when they went in.

“Shall we continue the tour?” Oswald suggested.

“That sounds lovely,” Ed replied, smile still a little blissed-out around the edges.

But they’d hardly taken another step before Oswald’s phone buzzed.

He grimaced apologetically up at Ed as he extricated it from his jacket pocket. When he swiped the screen open, however, it was a notification for a monthly reminder he’d set up a while back.

“My mother,” Oswald sighed, the familiar feeling of guilt crawling up his shoulders.

“What about her?” Ed asked, instantly more alert at Oswald’s tone.

“It’s just....I haven’t seen her in almost a month. I haven’t called either, and she gets so upset when I do that and...ugh,” Oswald dragged a hand over his face, “I’ve just been busy. But that’s no excuse to be a terrible son.”

“Nonsense, Oswald, you’re not a terrible son. You just have a great many responsibilities – it can be hard to juggle that much on your own. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“I’m sure she will,” Oswald agreed, “Once I go and visit her, anyway.”

Ed nodded, and Oswald felt a swoop of nerves take the place of guilt as an idea occurred to him.

“Ed, I wonder...” he began, trying to not to let his nerves show, “Maybe you would think it too soon, but....would you perhaps like to meet my mother?”

“You– what?” Ed looked taken aback.

“It would just be a short visit, a few hours for dinner. She’s wonderful and kind and I know she’ll adore you...” Oswald trailed off at the look on Ed’s face, switching gears abruptly, “But if you don’t want to, that’s fine, of course, I was just –”

“No, I’d love to!” Ed blurted out, looking about as surprised as Oswald felt at the intensity of his words. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I mean...” Ed waved his hands for a moment as he collected his thoughts. “It’s just that you’d mentioned her before, but she seemed so important to you I wasn’t sure you’d want me to actually _meet_ her.”

Oswald reached for Ed’s hand, taking it in both of his. “Of _course_ I want you to meet her, silly. Why wouldn’t I want the two most important people in my life to know each other?”

Ed’s brow furrowed, as if trying to find an answer to that rhetorical question. Then, apropos of nothing as far as Oswald could tell, Ed leaned forward and kissed him, hard and fast, before pulling away just as quickly, once again looking surprised by his own actions.

“I’m sorry,” Ed began quickly, “I suddenly found myself without words, and that just seemed the most appropriate response.”

“It definitely was,” Oswald agreed fervently, hands skating up to latch onto Ed’s waist, “The _best_ response. In fact, I wouldn’t have any objections to some more responses like that.”

Ed’s grin darkened, and he leaned down towards Oswald. “Maybe you should ask me some more questions, then, so I can give you more answers.”

Oswald felt his knees go a little weak, and tightened his grip on Ed. “I...yes. Uh, what is....your favorite, uh, season?”

Ed pressed their lips together, softer this time, mouth parting slightly so he could nip at Oswald’s lower lip before pulling away far enough to breathe an answer: “Fall.”

“Um...” Almost every thought Oswald had ever had seemed to have evacuated his brain as he cast about for something else to ask, already leaning forward eagerly as he landed upon, “Have you filled out your taxes yet?”

Ed let out a giggle, looking utterly delighted as he bent to kiss Oswald again, sweeping his tongue into Oswald’s mouth and eagerly swallowing his pleased moan in response.

As Oswald gasped against his mouth, Ed admitted in a giddy whisper, “I haven’t paid taxes in more than six years.”

Oswald blinked in confusion for a moment, before deciding that Ed’s method of non-verbal response was probably best for this moment. When they came up for air, he panted, “It occurs to me, I haven’t shown you the bedroom yet.”

“A terrible oversight,” Ed murmured, “We must remedy it at once.”

“Yes,” Oswald agreed, taking Ed’s hand and pulling him towards the door, “And afterwards, you’re going to tell me how you’ve been running circles around the IRS for half a decade.”

~~~~~

Gertrude opened the door and let out a dramatic gasp, dragging Oswald down into a rib-crushing hug. “My boy, my beautiful boy! You go so _long_ without calling your mother, I _worry_ and –” Gertrude pulled up short as she caught sight of the tall man lingering behind her son in the doorway. “Who is dis _handsome_ man you bring with you, Oswald?” She asked, looking the stranger up and down with a sly smile that echoed her son’s.

“Mother, this is Edward. My boyfriend,” Oswald added with emphasis, holding his breath slightly, waiting for a reaction.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Kapelput,” Ed said with a hesitant smile, carefully pronouncing her name the way she preferred as he held out a bouquet of flowers.

Gertrude’s eyes grew wide as she accepted the flowers with one hand, and then threw the other one up to pull Ed down into an embrace. He froze under the onslaught, gaze flying over to Oswald for help.

“ _Boyfriend_! Oh, I am so _happy_ ,” Gertrude continued to squeeze Ed, and Oswald finally intervened, gently tugging her away from the other man. “My little boy has been so _alone_ , and now – _look_ at you!” she continued to enthuse, even as Oswald steered her over towards the couch. She grabbed hold of Ed’s sleeve and dragged him down onto the cushions next to her.

“Edward, you must tell me _everything_. How did you and Oswald meet? Are you from Gotham? Does your family live here?”

Ed, who’d been looking increasingly apprehensive at her barrage of questions, went pale at that last one. Oswald realized he had no idea about Ed’s family background, but from the look on his face, it was nothing good. He quickly interjected, “Ah, mother, perhaps you should let Ed catch his breath for a moment –”

“It’s alright, Oswald,” Ed assured him with a sad sort of smile, before turning back to Gertrude. “I’m afraid my parents are a bit of a sore subject, Mrs. Kapelput. They weren’t exactly... _good_. Not like you.”

Gertrude clucked disapprovingly and patted Ed’s cheek, “So sad. But you don’t need dem anymore, you have me and my darling Oswald to take care of you now.”

“It’s true,” Oswald agreed, perching on a nearby chair and reaching out to take Ed’s hand.

Ed’s responding smile still looked a little strained, so Oswald turned to his mother to move the subject onto a less charged topic.

“So, how’s your on-going battle with the Kravitz family next door going?”

“Oh! My goodness, they are hopeless. And their _children_!” Gertrude stood, throwing her hands in the air as she bustled off towards the kitchen to put on the tea kettle, “I am _convinced_ their daughter wasn’t _born_ , she was _summoned_ , straight from _hell_!”

Ed started at the ferocity of her diatribe, before breaking into a delighted grin. “Well...” Ed leaned towards Oswald, whispering over Gertrude’s detailed telling of an unfortunate garbage disposal mishap from the day before, “I see now that you come by your _spirit_ honestly.”

“Spirit?” Oswald whispered back, innocently.

“By that I mean: fiery temper and propensity for holding grudges.”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Oswald replied with a wink.

“Oh, please, Mrs. Kapelput, let me help with that...” Ed stood quickly at the sight of Gertrude struggling to reach dusty tea cups stored on a high shelf, following her into the kitchen and easily retrieving the china.

“So _polite_!” Gertrude exclaimed, making Ed flush lightly at the praise.

Oswald smiled to himself as he watched the two making tea together, feeling unaccountably content. Making people happy had never been his forte or his priority, but right now, he could see why people bothered with all this, because it was an amazing feeling. Like what you got from gutting someone who’d insulted your shoes, but with less clean-up afterwards.

It was with a mild start that he realized that if his entire criminal empire crumbled into dust at that moment, he wouldn’t even care. Is this what it feels like to be in lo–  No. No, he couldn’t say the word, even in his own head, not yet. It was too soon and he wasn’t ready to commit like that and –

And Ed smiled over at him from where Gertrude was piling his arms with a plate of stale cookies, and Oswald knew that it was too late.

 _Fuck_ , he thought, with a touch of desperation. I’m in love with Edward Nygma.

~~~~~

Jim was making a valiant effort at putting a dent in the frankly alarming stack of paperwork that was putting down roots on his desk. Harvey was making somewhat less of a valiant effort, eyes drifting around the precinct, looking for a distraction when they alighted on Ed’s lanky shadow flitting between desks on the main floor. Normally, this wouldn’t be cause for comment, but today, Ed wasn’t dressed like a geek who stumbled out of the 1950s.

“Jim, look at Ed’s suit!” Harvey exclaimed, sitting up straight so he could peer down at Ed’s sharp jacket, a deep green with an elegant pinstripe. Jim looked up too, mostly in confusion at the utter non sequitur.

“Is that _bespoke_?” Harvey wondered out loud.

“You know what ‘bespoke’ means?” Jim asked, finding that the more pressing question at the moment.

“No way he can afford that on a GCPD salary,” Harvey muttered, gaze still stalking Ed through the station. He snapped his fingers suddenly, slapping a palm on his desk as he exclaimed, “The boyfriend! Ed’s got a sugar daddy!”

“ _What_?”

Harvey didn’t answer Jim, instead letting out an eardrum shattering wolf-whistle that had Ed and a dozen other nearby people staring up at them.

“Who is he, Ed?” he shouted, as Ed came up the stairs towards them hesitantly.

“Who is who?” he asked, hands clutching the hem of his – admittedly, _very_ nice – suit jacket as if to protect it from Harvey’s coarse tone.

“Who’s the guy with the big bucks, paying for you to look all pretty?”

“Harvey, don’t be rude,” Jim admonished.

“Rude? Who’s being rude? It’s a _compliment_. And I just wanna know where he met the guy so I find one of my own. Booze isn’t cheap you know.”

Jim was about to apologize for his partner, but Ed looked more pleased than offended.

“Detective Bullock, may I take it that that’s your roundabout way of complimenting my new suit?” Ed visibly preened as he said it, hand fluttering to smooth down his lapel.

“It is,” Harvey agreed, “And also to make a statement about our cruddy pay around here.” Harvey shook a fist at the sky, which was presumably where he thought money came from. Jim shook his head hopelessly.

“Dual purposed, I’m impressed,” Ed smiled, a sly look, and Jim felt a shiver run down his spine. Must be from Ed and Harvey not being at each other’s throats – it wasn’t natural.

“If you must know, it _was_ a gift from my....significant other,” Ed admitted.

“I knew it,” Harvey declared, before adding, “Seriously though, if your sugar daddy’s ever looking for an aging Irish ginger to keep him company...”

Ed laughed, and the sound was definitely a little unnerving. “You know, I think I’ll tell him you said that. He’d get a kick out of it.”

With that, Ed turned on his heel and was off. Harvey watched him go with a vague feeling of unease, not quite sure what had just happened.

“Well, that was weird,” Jim said, echoing Harvey’s thoughts. “Like, not Ed’s normal weird...different weird.”

“Yeah....” Harvey shook his head, “One fancy suit and he thinks he runs the joint.”

“Be glad that the quality of our clothes doesn’t determine rank, Harvey, or you’d be directing traffic.”

Harvey tossed a pen at Jim’s face, which he easily deflected with a sheaf of half-finished reports.

“Shut up,” Harvey shot back gruffly, “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes,” Jim confirmed, “And so do you,” he added, nudging one of Harvey’s stacks pointedly.

“Let’s go back to making fun of how I dress,” Harvey sighed, before reluctantly picking up his pen.

~~~~~

“The suit is _marvelous_ ,” Ed purred in Oswald’s ear, coming up behind him from the secret passage in the main hall after checking the coast was clear.

“Good,” Oswald grinned, turning his head so he could give Ed a peck on the cheek, “You deserve nothing less.”

“That’s very sweet of you, but you know, you don’t have to keep spoiling me like this.”

“Like what?” Oswald feigned absorption in the spreadsheets scattered on the table in front of him.

“The suit,” Ed gestured towards himself as he pulled up a nearby chair, “The roses at my apartment. The chocolates sent by messenger. It’s lovely, but not necessary.”

Oh, but it is, Oswald didn’t say, because otherwise I’d have already blurted out that I love you, and you’d have run for the hills.

What he _did_ say was, “I like buying you things that make you happy. What’s the point of money if you can’t you use it to make the people you lo– _care_ about happy.” Oswald cursed internally. It was only a matter of time before he slipped up.

“Besides,” he continued in a slightly too-chipper tone as he blew past that near-miss, “I’m really doing a public service. I’m sure everyone at the GCPD enjoyed the view...” He set down his pen so he could run his hand along the forearm of Ed’s suit, slipping his fingers just under the cuff, teasing.

“Yes, actually – Detective Bullock of all people noticed.”

“Now that is unusual. I rather thought the title of ‘detective’ was honorary at best for that scruffy lump of lard.”

Ed giggled at the insult and Oswald tried not to flush with pleasure. Making Ed laugh shouldn’t affect him so deeply, but it did.

“He’s far from observant, it’s true,” Ed agreed, “but apparently even he could spot quality when it was right in front of his nose. And, I am fairly certain that Detectives Gordon and Bullock have deduced that I have a paramour of a masculine nature.”

“Why do you think that?”

Ed grinned. “Harvey wanted to know where’d I’d found my ‘sugar daddy.’”

“Ah. Subtlety was never exactly Bullock’s strong suit.”

“No, indeed.” Ed’s smile took on a teasing note as he added, “Also, the detective would like to inform my aforementioned sugar daddy that he is open to an arrangement, if you’re ever interested.”

Oswald cringed instinctively. “Well, there’s my nightmare fuel for the next week.”

Ed giggled again, looking so pleased that not even the image of Harvey Bullock: Sugar Baby could stop Oswald from smiling back.

“Oh!” Ed was suddenly distracted by the papers in front of Oswald, “Are you checking over the books for one of your holdings?”

“Yes, for one of the gambling clubs over in Granton. I’ve been laundering the money through a few legitimate fronts, but with the Knights’ actually playing a decent game lately, the basketball revenues have been more than the usual accounts can handle...” Oswald tapped his pen against his temple, as if that could knock ideas loose in his brain.

“May I...?” Ed asked eagerly, hands reaching out to flutter over the mess of grids and numbers.

“Be my guest,” Oswald sighed gratefully, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

He wasn’t sure if he’d actually fallen asleep or if Ed’s skill with numbers was just uncanny, because it felt like only a moment later that Ed’s hand was on his wrist, bringing him back to the present.

“Oswald, I think I’ve figured something out. You see...” Ed explained his plan, showing him the red lines and circles and notes he’d jotted in the margins, and Oswald’s eyes swam a little before the genius of the set-up snapped into focus.

“Ed, this is...this is brilliant.” Oswald pulled the papers towards him so he could inspect them more closely. It was miraculous – better than what even the skeeviest of the Wall Street bunch he had on payroll could come up with.

“Well,” Ed replied with a thin veneer of modesty, “finance is just a number puzzle, and one that follows certain rules – and where there are rules, there are shortcuts.”

Oswald just shook his head in amazement. “This is no mere shortcut, it’s _genius_.”

Ed ducked his head at the praise, grinning down at the table. Oswald could feel his mouth opening again, he wanted to say it so badly but he _couldn’t_ –

“I just....Ed, I...I would be _lost_ without you.” There. That got close to the truth without getting _too_ close.

Ed looked up, taking a moment to push his glasses up with his index finger before replying, “And you mean a great deal to me as well, Oswald. Ever since I met you, my whole life has just been.... _more_. In so many ways. I can’t imagine...”

Ed’s expression turned solemn as he trailed off. After a moment, he asked in serious tones, “Would you promise me something, Oswald?”

“Anything,” Oswald responded, far too quickly.

“Don’t leave.” There were depths behind Ed’s brown eyes that spoke of a greater pain than Oswald knew how to deal with using only words. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Oswald assured him, reaching out to take his hand. “Wild horses and the entire Gotham police department couldn’t drag me away.”

Ed smiled weakly, and Oswald felt a strain in his heart, wanting only to banish those frown lines from Ed’s perfect face permanently. “Ed,” he leaned forward, “If you could do absolutely anything in the world right now, what would you do?”

Ed squinted in thought. “Is ‘you’ too obvious an answer?” he finally replied.

“It’s sweet,” Oswald grinned, “but you can have me any old time.” Ed looked pleased at that, pulling Oswald closer until they were both leaning across the table, sharing breath as Oswald continued, “What’s something special? What’s something that would make your life... _more_?” Oswald echoed Ed’s words, and watched as something dark and beautiful began to unfold behind his unassuming features.

“Well...there is _something_....” Ed began cautiously, “Something I’d hoped we could do together someday.”

Oswald nodded for him to go on.

“It’s a bit, er, unconventional in terms of relationships milestones but given who we are.... I thought it might be fun to....kill someone. Together.”

Ed looked nervous at the admission, but Oswald felt a grin stretch his lips as soon as the meaning of Ed’s words registered in his brain.

He leaned forward, running a hand up Ed’s arm, his shoulder, brushing against his neck before settling, tangling in his tie as he whispered, “Did you have someone in mind?”

~~~~~

“Ta-da!” Oswald threw open the heavy steel door to the sub-basement– a concrete, sound-proofed, windowless room equipped with anything a person could want to use in the art of making another person suffer. Victor Zsasz had done some truly exquisite things in this place.

Ed gasped in delight, bringing a hand to his heart as he took in the sight. “Oh, Oswald, it’s glorious.” His gaze snapped to the dark, struggling, shape bound up in the center of the room.

Oswald crossed the floor and pulled the black hood off the balding old man he’d had his goons pick up from a cruddy apartment on Slum Row at Ed’s instructions earlier that day. “We got the right man, I trust?” he asked, examining their victim.

“Oh, yes you did....” Ed confirmed, eyes fixed on the shuddering, blubbering form tied to a chair before him. “Hello, Mr. Johnson, do you remember me?”

It wasn’t clear if Mr. Johnson did or not, but in any case, he looked thoroughly terrified, and that seemed to be enough to prompt Ed to continue.

“In seventh grade, you thought I’d cheated because I didn’t get anything wrong on your simplistic little algebra exam. You called me a liar in front of everyone, you called me a _loser_ –” Ed drew up short as he realized that at some point he’d picked up a scalpel from a nearby table and was now only inches from driving it into their prisoner’s neck. He took a measured step back before continuing.

“Now, that’s probably not deserving of a death sentence under most traditional moral codes, but...” Ed shrugged carelessly, turning to Oswald as his tone became businesslike. “Mr. Johnson is also well suited to this enterprise since he lives alone and has no close family to speak of. He’s just a sad,” Ed tapped the end of his scalpel against the man’s forehead, accentuating each of his words, “miserable, rude, cretinous excuse for a human being.”

“Well, it looks like you’ve already selected your starting tool,” Oswald observed, reaching out to gently cup Ed’s hand as it held the scalpel loosely. Ed shivered lightly at the touch, eyes meeting Oswald’s, flickering down to where their hands touched and then back. “Where would you like to begin?”

Oswald had done this before, and frankly, the joy was definitely starting to fade. But Ed was just a beginner, and he had a thousand things he wanted to try, and Oswald planned on giving him the opportunity to do every last one of them.

He’d thought Ed looked beautiful before, but now – Oswald couldn’t bear to look away, even for a second.

Ed’s moves were calculated, each cut measured and the reaction noted meticulously in that gorgeous computer-like brain of his, but that didn’t detract from his unfiltered glee at the experience.

Ed laughed, louder when Mr. Johnson screamed, turning nearly hysterical at the end when he stabbed his scalpel into the man’s femoral artery, blood splattering his glasses as the life began to drain in earnest from his unfortunate victim.

There was a clink as Oswald stepped forward to get a better view and accidentally kicked a discarded blade. The sound sent Ed rearing suddenly on Oswald. The ferocity in his eyes should have sent Oswald skittering backwards, but instead he was pulled forward, magnetic, unable to stop himself from reaching out to touch Ed. He dragged a thumb across his open mouth, wiping away a spot of blood. Ed went still under the touch for just a moment, before pouncing on Oswald, crushing their lips together.

Oswald could _feel_ the pure confidence rolling off of Ed as he plundered his mouth, fisting one hand in Oswald’s jacket at the other in his hair, pulling just this side of too hard.

They broke for air and their eyes locked, Ed’s expression wild but laser-focused on Oswald, taking in the mess of his hair, the red in his cheeks, the wetness of his mouth.

“Do what you want,” Oswald heard himself say, “Whatever you want with me, just _take_ it –”

“On your knees,” Ed cut him off, voice hoarse.

Oswald went to the floor enthusiastically, hands shaking as they went for Ed’s zipper.

Despite his earlier fierceness, Ed’s hands were gentle as they coaxed his mouth open, fingers flitting along his jaw before sliding into his hair.

Everything was over fast, both for them and for their victim. Ed came with a shout as Mr. Johnson gurgled his last breath.

Ed was slightly off balance as he put himself back together and reached down to pull Oswald to his feet.

Oswald held onto Ed’s jacket for dear life, not sure his legs would support him. He looked up and saw the haze in Ed’s eyes began to dissipate like a mist clearing as he seemed to become properly conscious of everything he’d just done.

“Oswald, are you– I’m– I–”

Oswald cut him off breathlessly, “Edward Nygma, I’ve never seen anything so magnificent in my life.”

The faint traces of worry that had begun to appear on Ed’s face were washed away as he pressed a hard kiss to Oswald’s mouth. Ed tasted of blood and sweat and despair and ecstasy, and Oswald chased the flavor with a moan, leaning into his heat.

Ed slipped a hand down to palm the front of Oswald’s pants and grinned as he jerked forward into the touch.

“Don’t worry, Oswald, I’ll take care of you....but, somewhere a little cleaner I think.” Ed cast a glance around the room. “Your men can take care of this... _refuse_ , I trust?”

Oswald nodded eagerly and began to lilt towards the exit. Ed smiled indulgently, following him up the stairs and through the dark halls.

After a moment’s thought, Oswald ducked into the kitchen, procuring a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses before taking Ed’s hand and continuing to the bedroom.

“You know,” Ed began with a touch of shyness as he accepted a glass from Oswald, “this has truly been one of the best nights of my life.”

Oswald let his free hand drift up and stroke Ed’s cheek, drinking in the earnest joy on his face, so at odds with the spatters of gore still decorating his beautiful features.

“And of mine, as well.” Oswald clinked their glasses together, toasting, “To many more.”

“To many, _many_ more,” Ed agreed, taking a sip of his drink. Then, without warning, the softness in his eyes turned devilish and he threw down his glass, knocking Oswald’s out of his hand too. They crashed to the ground, spilling their contents on the very expensive rug, to Oswald’s dismay. Any upset was forgotten a moment later, however, when Ed pushed Oswald back and pinned him to the bed, kissing him hard before forgoing his mouth and starting to suck and bite his way down Oswald’s neck. He held Oswald down by his wrists as he insinuated a thigh between his legs, starting up a friction that had Oswald moaning in seconds.

“I could really - _ah_! - get used to this... _assertive_ side of you,” Oswald gasped, wriggling with pleasure under the unexpected onslaught.

“Good,” Ed purred, fingers dancing up the column of Oswald’s throat, his thumb pressing into his pulse point, “Because I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

“Lucky me,” Oswald murmured. And for the rest of the night, Ed made good and sure he had much better things to do than talk.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Oswald was walking Ed to the door the next morning, holding his hand and smiling like a loon, when a familiar figure in a leather jacket with a head full of bouncy curls materialized from around the corner.

“Hey, Penguin, I was looking for you...” Selina trailed off as she spotted Ed, eyes narrowing as she took in the sight of him and Oswald.

“How did you even get in here?” Oswald asked exasperatedly, already planning on firing whatever idiots were on guard duty that day.

Selina ignored him in favor of squinting at Ed some more, tilting her head and then snapping her fingers as she exclaimed, “Forensics guy!”

“Street trash girl,” Ed replied coolly.

Oswald looked between the two of them with increasing alarm. “You’ve met?”

Selina again didn’t respond to him, addressing Ed instead. “So, _you’re_ Penguin’s new squeeze, huh? Didn’t see that one coming.”

“My friend here is none of your concern,” Oswald told her pointedly, letting a note of menace slip into his voice.

“Right, of course not,” Selina held up her hands, pulling an innocent face as she took a step back.

“No need for you to be running your mouth around town,” Oswald continued, leaning towards her.

“Who would I tell? I mean....unless I’m taking a stroll, and end up at the police department....maybe I feel like catching up with Detective Gordon. It’s been a while.”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground, _Cat_ ,” Oswald spat, gripping his cane with white knuckles, “and I get the feeling you’ve used up most of your nine lives.”

Selina rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Still more life than your boy here will have in ‘im if his work buddies find out who he’s screwing.”

Oswald glared daggers down at her, and she returned his gaze steadily. Just as it looked like actual steam might start coming out his ears, he abruptly broke their staring contest with a huff, turning on his heel and marching towards the main room. Ed and Selina followed in curious silence, shooting looks at each other as they rounded the corner.

Oswald headed for the sideboard, flinging open the cabinet and lifting out a heavy iron box, chained and padlocked shut. He produced a key from a pocket of his jacket, clicking open the lock and flipping the box open with a clunk. Oswald extracted something that glittered in the firelight, coiling in the palm of his hand.

“Is this enough to buy your silence?” he asked, turning back to Selina and Ed as he let fall a chain of diamonds that dangled elegantly from his fingers.

The look in Selina’s eyes was a resounding yes. She reached for the necklace but Oswald jerked it away.

“So, we have an _agreement_?” he pressed.

“Sure. You give me the sparkles, I forget about your string-bean boyfriend.”

Ed bristled at the insult, but Selina had already snatched the diamonds from Oswald’s hand.

As Selina inspected the jewels with a smile, Oswald added in his most threatening tone, “If I even _suspect_ that anything you’ve seen here has reached the ears of the GCPD...well. Then we’re going to find out just how many ways you can skin a cat.”

“Whatever, Penguin,” Selina shot back, paying the two men no mind as she turned and walked away with her prize, “Maybe by then you’ll have come up with some better puns.”

Oswald rolled his eyes, concern abated now. It was clear that whatever loyalty Selina possessed was easily purchased, and the GCPD was notoriously under-funded.

“She could still prove to be a problem,” Ed noted darkly once her footsteps had receded.

“Perhaps,” Oswald agreed thoughtfully, “Unless...”

Ed turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t want to actually –”

“Heavens, no, I don’t kill children. Though if it was required to protect you...” Oswald shrugged. Ed smiled softly, touched.

“No, I was thinking that her information would no longer be valuable if our relationship was common knowledge.”

Ed looked confused. “But that would almost certainly require....”

“I know.” Oswald reached out to take Ed’s hands in his. “And I’m not asking you to change your life, not now, or ever, I just want to be clear that....you could do so much _more_ , Edward Nygma. And if you ever want to do it on the wrong side of the law, I’ll be here to help you.”

“But...” Ed was still frowning slightly, “wouldn’t I be more valuable to you at the GCPD? Where I have access to all sorts of information that almost no one else does?”

Oswald blinked. “Would you...would you do that? Be a mole for me?”

“Of _course_. It would be...thrilling.”

“Well, then,” Oswald laughed, “That’s settled!” He added after a moment, feeling slightly anxious, “Just know that my original offer still stands, if you’re ever bored working behind the scenes....I don’t want to be another person in your life who holds you back. I want you and your genius to be properly appreciated.”

“Oswald...” Ed reached out to frame Oswald’s face with both hands, thumbs gently stroking across his cheekbones, “I can say with certainty that you are the one person in my life who has truly appreciated me for _everything_ I am.”

Oswald covered Ed’s hands with his own as he smiled up at him, “Maybe it’s selfish of me to think so but...I’m glad. I’m glad that no one else could steal you away from me before I could find you.”

“No one could steal me from you,” Ed assured him, “After all, you’re the King of Gotham. No one would dare.”

“Indeed.” Oswald tilted his head thoughtfully as he asked, “Does that make you the power behind my throne?”

Ed’s smile was hesitant as he answered, “If you’d allow me to be.”

Oswald answer was anything but hesitant: “I’d like nothing better.”

~~~~~

As it turned out, Ed was able to enact his new role as informant that very day. He’d hardly been gone an hour before Oswald found his phone ringing, and picked it up to hear Ed babbling excitedly about an impending drug bust on one of Oswald’s subsidiaries.

Oswald smiled at Ed’s enthusiasm, “Thank you very much for the heads-up, I’ll have my boys pack up their equipment and move out immediately.”

“If I might suggest an alternative,” Ed piped up, “You _could_ call your men at that location and make sure anything truly important is moved before the police arrive, and then sacrifice whatever’s non-essential.”

Oswald’s smile slipped, “And I would do that....why?”

“Because we’re playing the long game. We mustn’t waste my insights on small fry like a little meth den. Let the GCPD have their meager victory – it’ll keep them bumbling in the dark while we prepare for bigger battles.”

Oswald didn’t answer immediately, and after a moment of silence Ed quickly tacked on, sounding suddenly nervous, “I don’t mean to overstep, I just thought –”

“No, no, you’re quite right....” Oswald gently cut off Ed’s anxious words, rubbing his chin as he mentally ran over the contents of that particular drug operation and concluded that it would make a very acceptable sacrificial lamb. “Quite right as usual, dear Ed.”

Now it was Ed’s turn to pause, before asking, “Did you....did you just call me ‘dear’?”

“Oh, um....” Oswald blinked, caught off-guard, “I, well, yes. If you don’t like –”

“ _I love it_ ,” Ed said in a heated whisper.

Oswald had to take a moment to loosen his tie. This conversation was taking a rather unexpected turn.

“So, _dear_...tell me, what are you doing right now?” Oswald had never done anything like this before, but he was certainly up for giving it a go.

“I’m...I’m in my lab. I’m testing a toxin we found in a victim’s bloodstream on some animal subjects.”

Okay. Not so sexy. But, Oswald could work with it.

“Bet you’ve got all those shiny metal tools around, hmm? For cutting and slicing....”

“Yes...” Ed agreed eagerly.

“I can see you...holding them with your long, perfect fingers... _gripping_ them....”

There was a short, muffled gasp on Ed’s side of the phone and Oswald grinned as he went on, “You’re so talented, darling, like a master artist at work, only you paint with different colors...”

Something like a whimper came through the line before Ed whispered, “Oswald, I –”

Oswald flinched at a loud banging, as of someone very rude knocking on a door, blasting through the speakers and cutting off whatever Ed was going to say. A moment later, he heard Bullock’s voice yelling, “Hang up with your boyfriend, Nygma, we’ve got work to do!”

“That man really is more perceptive than I gave him credit for,” Oswald sighed.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Ed grumbled. “But I’d still better go. I’ll see you tonight and....good luck.”

“Who needs luck? I’ve got you.”

There was a moment of silence before Ed replied, “Please remind me to kiss you very thoroughly for saying that when I see you tonight.”

“Absolutely.”

~~~~~

Oswald didn’t get a chance to collect on that reminder right away, as Ed returned to the mansion that evening brimming with excitement, launching into a tale of his day before he even sat down at the table with Oswald.

“And then one of the thugs got loose while they were fingerprinting him,” he explained, hands illustrating his words in the air before him, “And he tried to grab me – I wouldn’t have even been near the processing desk, but I was monitoring the chain of custody on the evidence retrieved at the scene of the arrest because those dolts can’t tell a gun casing from a syringe on a good day and –”

“Wait, back up,” Oswald raised a hand, “this man, he almost hurt you?” Oswald tried to keep his voice light, but judging from the way Ed’s eyes narrowed at him, he failed.

“‘Almost’ being the operative term – I’m quite alright.”

“This time,” Oswald grumbled. “I wish there was a way I could make it clear to everyone in Gotham that laying a hand on you is an offense punishable by a long and painful death.”

“How deliciously territorial of you, Oswald, but truly, you don’t have to worry. I can take care of myself. And besides, I work in a station full of police officers, it’s about as safe as one can get. Well, from a certain perspective.”

Oswald hummed his agreement, even while he mentally planned on tracking down whoever this man was and perpetuating some anonymous revenge on him for daring to even get close to Ed.

“Anyway,” Ed continued, unperturbed, “then Jim tackled him to the ground, it was all very exciting.”

“That sounds like Jim, alright,” Oswald sighed, reaching for his wine, “Bit of a drama queen, though he’d never admit it.”

“Right...you knew him fairly well, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Not as well as I would have _liked_ but...”

Ed cocked his head curiously, prompting Oswald to continue.

“When he spared my life at risk to his own I thought it meant that we had a connection, but unfortunately, it was one-sided.” Oswald felt a swell of bitterness rise in his chest as he recounted a summarized version of his ups and downs with the detective. “And no matter how many times he came to me asking for favors, and I gave them to him without a second thought, he never truly appreciated me or what I’d done for him. I kept pining away for months until I started to realize that he didn’t see me as anything more than a criminal to be locked away.”

“’Pining’?” Ed’s voice took on a deadened quality as he echoed Oswald’s words. “Are you implying that you....that you _felt_ something for James Gordon?”

“Well...” Oswald shrugged, “Yes, I suppose. Now I can see that it was never real but....” Oswald’s pensive expression turned teasing as he concluded, “I wouldn’t be the first to fall for those big blue eyes.”

“Big blue eyes?” Ed repeated in a slightly choked voice.

Oswald was honestly enjoying watching the beginnings of a murderous rage build in Ed’s features, but decided he’d best intervene before things got out of hand. “Ed, you don’t have to worry. Any last pangs I may have felt for that man are long extinguished. There’s no one for me but you.”

Ed still looked like he was plotting Jim Gordon’s imminent demise, eyes flashing behind his glasses. Oswald bit his lip, and then leaned forward to hook a finger in Ed’s collar, dragging him in close so he could whisper, “Would you like for me to prove it to you?”

Ed perked up. “Are you going to prove it by ripping out Jim’s spine?”

“No, Ed.”

“Oh.” Ed’s expression fell.

Oswald rolled his eyes before pulling Ed into a kiss. When he finally released his grip on the back of Ed’s neck, the other man was looking distinctly dazed. Oswald smiled, pleased with his work.

“Better than killing Jim?” he asked with a coy smile.

 “Yes,” Ed smiled back, “Though I think I still might have a few _words_ with dear old Jim....just to make sure we’re on the same page.”

~~~~~

Jim was sipping his coffee and half-heartedly looking over some papers when all of a sudden his field of vision was filled with a very irritated Edward Nygma.

“Hi! Ed. What....can I do for you....” Jim asked, leaning slowly back but finding to his dismay that Ed simply leaned in closer, glaring at his face like it had said something rude about his mother.

In response, Ed snapped, “Did you know that blue eyes indicate _recessive_ alleles which cause a _lack_ of melatonin in the iris?”

“I did not know that...” Jim admitted, chair creaking ominously as he tilted it even further away from the inexplicably irate forensic scientist.

“You should keep your recessive irises to _yourself_ ,” Ed hissed.

“Uh...sure?” Jim agreed uncertainly, “I’ll do that.”

Ed nodded, apparently satisfied, and turned on his heel with a sniff before walking away.

“ _What_ the _hell_ ,” Jim muttered without taking his eyes off of Ed’s retreating back.

 “Yeah, seriously,” Harvey echoed as he scooted over so he could peer at Jim’s face, inspecting it briefly before shaking his head. “I don’t know what Ed was on about, your eyes are fine.”

“Thanks, Harv. D’you think we could get back to work now?”

“What work? It’s just a security detail, it sets itself up.”

“Uh-huh. You know the cargo is worth _thirty million dollars_ – that’s why they got a GCPD squad for its stay at the museum in the first place.”

“What’s so special about this, uh, Fah-berg-ee egg anyway?”

“It’s pronounced Fah-bear-jay,” Jim corrected him.

“More like Fabergé,” Lee piped up as she came up the stairs behind them, pronouncing the word with an impeccable French accent.

Jim turned to her with a smile, asking, “Did you learn French when I wasn’t looking?”

“No, I’m just classy,” Lee replied, flipping her hair over her shoulder with a wink. “And to answer your question, Harvey, this particular egg is special because it’s been missing for decades. I read all about it in the paper the other day. People have been searching for it ever since it was stolen from the Russian Tsarina Maria Feodorovna’s bedroom, but no one ever caught the thief that did it, and the egg was long thought to be lost. So, besides its innate value, it also comes with a great story – it’ll undoubtedly attract thieves out to make a name for themselves.”

“And _that_ is why we have to set up special security for the museum,” Jim concluded.

“Jeez, alright,” Harvey held his hands up, “I’ll protect the shiny, stupidly expensive egg.”

“Good man,” Jim reached across the desk to pat Harvey’s shoulder companionably.

“Morning, Ed,” Lee called breezily, causing Jim and Harvey to both straighten up in the chairs and look around.

Ed materialized from the shadows on the floor below their desk’s raised platform, glancing up from his clipboard. “Good morning, Dr. Thompkins,” he replied pleasantly, with no trace of his animosity from just a few minutes ago. In fact, he looked downright cheerful.

Jim and Harvey exchanged uneasy glances and didn’t relax until Ed had disappeared back down the hallway to his lab.

Lee caught on and asked, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Jim said slowly, “It’s just...well. What do you think of my eyes?”

“They’re...blue?” Lee answered, bemused.

Jim slumped, a little disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm.

“What do you want me to say?” she chuckled, patting his cheek, “They’re gorgeous limpid pools?”

“Like crystal oceans,” Harvey added on in a disturbingly convincing falsetto.

“Azure seas filled with dolphins and seahorses,” Lee exalted, throwing her hands over her heart.

“Alright, alright...” Jim stood and walked away on the pretense of getting coffee, flapping a hand dismissively back in their direction. But, he couldn’t quite hide his smile – he knew he was damn lucky to have obnoxious, ridiculous people like these in his life.

~~~~~

“We have got to be the unluckiest bastards in the whole world,” Harvey moaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Jim couldn’t bring himself to disagree. After all, he and Harvey had drawn the short straws of the first shift working security at the museum – they were supposed to await the egg’s arrival and see that it was set up safely. He’d thought the worst of this assignment would be the numbing boredom, but no.

Instead, he and Harvey found themselves looking down at the inside of a triple-locked, titanium-reinforced steel, foam-padded carrying case to see not a thirty million dollar antique, but a small, plastic Easter egg. It was green and slightly cracked, with a black question mark drawn on it. When he first saw it, Jim’s first thought was: “Gee, thirty million seems a bit steep for this.” His second thought was: “I hope to God this doesn’t come out of my paycheck.”

Harvey seemed to be thinking something similar as he suggested, “Maybe we should just shut the case, call in some other guys, and let _them_ find out the priceless artifact is missing.”

“No go. The museum guy already saw it.” Jim gestured vaguely to the man lying prone on the ground next to them, possibly praying, possibly just crying. He’d almost fainted when they opened the case, and frankly, Jim didn’t really blame him.

“We should call this in, then,” Harvey concluded, grudgingly.

Jim nodded his agreement and reached slowly for his phone. He opened it and was about to dial, but froze, turning to Harvey. “What do I say?”

Harvey tipped his hat back and scratched his head, shrugging. “You could say...sorry?”

“Sorry? That’s all you got?”

“.... _very_ sorry?”

“Great.” Jim hit call and closed his eyes. He had a feeling this was going to be a very long day.

~~~~~

“You’re home later than usual,” Oswald noted curiously as Ed joined him by the fire where he was sipping a glass of wine.

“I had a rather busy day...” Ed replied shiftily, eyes glinting.

 “Yes, I imagine so,” Oswald drawled, setting his glass aside, “I heard on the news that someone swiped a thirty million dollar Fabergé egg right out from under a police detail’s noses – did they put you on the case?”

“Why they certainly did!” Ed giggled, and Oswald noticed that he was clutching a dark bag in his hands. Ed noticed Oswald’s line of sight and tried to stifle his laughter as he lifted it.

“I am neither bronze nor silver, neither brick nor bar, I am born of feathers but myself have none – what am I?”

“Ed,” Oswald sighed, “You know by now that I’m no good with riddles.”

“How about an easier one: my home country is red, I’m sought by the boys in blue, but I shine only gold, in the brightest hue....” Ed drew the bag away from its contents to reveal a stunning, intricately carved golden egg.

“ _How_ did you...?” Oswald breathed, an irrational part of his brain thinking that if he spoke too loudly the shining treasure might be scared away.

“It wasn’t terribly hard,” Ed replied in a matching whisper, “A few carefully orchestrated scheduling mishaps for the attending officers, some minor sleight of hand....and, tada!”

“Ed, this is....this is a _spectacular_ feat.”

“I know,” Ed agreed giddily, “I’d never stolen anything remotely this valuable before, and _wow_! What a rush.” Ed laughed again, that low, rapid-fire, chuckle that still sent pleased shivers down Oswald’s spine, even as he was entranced with the egg’s royal glow. “I had to take extra care in covering my tracks, make sure it didn’t look like an inside job, lay a few bread crumbs to send Gotham’s finest running off in a dozen wrong directions, but....it was all so very worth it.”

Oswald nodded, as if in a trance. “May I hold it?” he asked, reaching for the egg, its soft golden shell looking almost molten in the firelight.

“Of course you can,” Ed handed it over happily, “It’s for you!”

Oswald froze in his inspection of the treasure and looked up at Ed, mouth agape. “It’s....what?”

“For you,” Ed confirmed, leaning in to peck Oswald on the cheek. “Happy birthday!”

“Happy– huh?”

Ed tapped the egg and then pointed at Oswald, “This is your birthday present, silly. Can you believe I had to find out from your _mother_ that your birthday was coming up? Honestly, Oswald, if not for her, I might have missed it entirely!”

What Oswald thought Ed was missing entirely was the fact that he’d just given him _thirty million dollars of stolen property as a birthday gift_.

So, he said, “Ed, you’ve just given me thirty million dollars of stolen property...as a birthday gift?”

Ed’s gleeful expression cracked slightly, and he replied softly, “Don’t you like it?”

“I _love it_ ,” Oswald quickly assured him, cradling the egg closer to his chest. “This is...this is the most...the most _incredible_ gift, I– I’m just at a bit of a loss for words.”

“If I may suggest a few simple syllables,” Ed smirked, “such as ‘thank you.’”

Oswald grinned and carefully set the egg on the wooden side table, so he could grab Ed by the lapels and kiss that smug expression that he so adored.

“Thank you,” he pressed the words into Ed’s skin, and thought that he’d never meant the words as much as he did in that moment.

“You’re welcome,” Ed beamed.

“Well, now, I wonder what I should do with my extraordinary new prize?” Oswald tapped his chin exaggeratedly.

“It’s yours to do with as you please, of course,” Ed answered seriously, “though its sale could fund any number of new ventures...”

Oswald tilted his head and scooted the egg a few inches to the left on the little table. “To be honest, I think I might just like to keep it as decoration, at least for now.”

“A wise choice,” Ed nodded, “If you display it semi-publicly, it’ll be quite the show of power to those you do business with, a symbol of what you’re capable of.”

“A symbol of what _you_ are capable of, my darling Ed,” Oswald corrected him with a smile, “And more importantly, a symbol of how incredibly fortunate I am to have someone like you.”

“Oh.” Ed blinked, and Oswald thought he caught a hint of a blush rise in his cheeks.

“Ed,” Oswald took both of Ed’s hands in his own, “this gift means the world to me, not just because of its intrinsic value, but because of what it represents – because it comes from you. I want to make sure you know that.”

Ed nodded, a small smile gracing his lips. “So....you really do like it?” he asked, still needing confirmation, which Oswald was all too happy to give.

“It’s _perfect_.”

~~~~~

But, perfect things can’t last forever.

Given his rocky history with any sort of human interaction that didn’t involve threats or violence, it was probably a miracle Oswald had kept the peace with his inner demons this long.

And the worst thing was, Oswald knew he shouldn’t have said it. As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them, but even more took their place and spilled from between his teeth before his brain could reassert itself over his boiling anger at the world, and before he knew it, he’d taken out his fury on the one person in the universe he _wasn’t_ angry at.

God, why had he said those things? Words calculated to cut directly to Ed’s ego, his heart, his softest, weakest spots. He hadn’t meant a single one of them.

It was just that I had a terrible day, Oswald rationalized desperately to himself afterwards, I had to deal with some lunatic with a ventriloquist dummy holding a tommy gun trying to take over my operations in the Narrows and it was just _too much_ , even by Gotham standards.

But it wasn’t just that. He’d snapped when Ed, clearly not picking up on Oswald’s hair-trigger temper being pushed to its breaking point, asked him a riddle. More of that damn wordplay that Oswald usually decided to find charming, but today he just didn’t have the _patience_.

That didn’t excuse it though. Flying off the handle at someone he was supposed to _protect_ , carving cruelty into Ed’s shocked features with every poisoned word as he poured his fury at the day’s trials into a handful of petty annoyances and tossed them like scalding oil on Ed – poor, innocent Ed.

And the look on Ed’s face as he stood there frozen, how his features twisted into rage and despair and betrayal all at once, and then just washed into a cool neutrality as he walked quietly away.

That was three days ago.

After a few hours, when Ed didn’t come back or call, Oswald sent him a hesitant text. He got no response. Like a coward, he sent Gabe over to check on Ed when a day had passed with no contact. Gabe came back with minor electrical burns and a clear message: leave Ed alone.

And so Oswald did. That was about all he did, however – despite years with no one at his side, the sudden loss of Ed was like being plunged into the icy depths of the bay, except over and over again with every second as he realized Ed was gone and he might never come back.

Sinking into a depression the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the hellscape that was his high school years, Oswald went to bed and didn’t get back out again.

He’d ruined things, probably forever, with the one person in the whole world who could ever understand him and love him for who he is.

It had probably been inevitable, given his track record with relationships, that he’d destroy this one – this beautiful thing, better than anything else he’d ever had – so explosively and completely. 

So why the hell should he care about anything else?

~~~~~

“Hey, Ozzie!”

Oswald cracked an eye open at the sound of his name, still half-asleep. The herald seemed to be coming from a small demon peeking around one of the bedposts. Whatever. If one of hell’s minions had finally come for his soul, so be it. Oswald dragged the covers back over his head.

“Nope!” the little demon’s grubby hands got hold of the comforter and nearly tore it as she pulled it away from his face. A moment later, the room was flooded with sunlight as the curtains were flung open. Oswald shrunk back, throwing an arm over his eyes to no avail.

Selina, because of _course_ she was the face of his torment that morning, put her hands on her hips and glared down at him, sun haloing around her leather jacket.

“Well, you’ve looked better,” she announced.

“Hrmpph,” was Oswald’s response. Then, when it looked like Selina wasn’t going anywhere, he added with a sigh, “You get conscripted by my goons?”

“Yup. You should hire different guys, these ones are all babies.”

Oswald made a vague noise of acquiescence. It was true, after all.

“I don’t know what they think _you_ can do,” he huffed, making a grab for the comforter, but Selina snatched it out of his grasp again.

“Well, get your dumb ass out of bed, for starters.”

“What’s the point?” he whined, not particularly caring that he sounded like a spoiled child.

“The point is, your stupid criminal empire isn’t going to run itself.”

“I don’t care,” Oswald mumbled.

“Well, you’re also never gonna fix things with tall, dark, and dorky by lying here all day.”

Oswald cut a sharp look at her. “Who says _I’m_ the one who has to fix things?”

“Well, was whatever happened between you two your fault?”

Oswald scowled.

“I’ll take that as a yes. So, that means you _really_ can’t just lay in bed forever. _You_ have to be the one to try and make it right.”

Oswald’s scowl deepened, but he didn’t disagree. After a minute, he grumbled, “Even if I did want to make things right, how would I do it?”

“Starting with an apology wouldn’t hurt.”

“He won’t take my calls, or answer my texts. I can’t stop by his work, obviously, and I’d go visit him at home but I think he might stab me if I just show up at his place without warning.”

“What a sweetheart,” Selina drawled. “Sounds to me like you’ve gotta think outside the box.”

“Such a useful suggestion,” Oswald sneered, “Do you have anything a tad more specific?”

“Don’t look at me, I avoid this kind of relationship crap.”

Oswald groaned in defeat and flopped back into his pillows, wondering absently if Selina would try and stop him from suffocating himself in them.

Selina took pity on him after a moment. “Look, you just gotta figure out what’s really important here. What can you do that would really mean something to him?”

Oswald opened his mouth to say something that would no doubt be rude, but was hit with a flash of inspiration before he could say a word. He sat up abruptly, purpose straightening his shoulders as the pieces of a plan began to slot together in his mind.

Selina smiled as he reached for his phone and began typing furiously, hopping out of bed and dragging on a robe as he headed for the door. He ripped it open and shouted for Gabe before spinning around and heading for his closet.

Selina took the hint and made to leave. “Let me know how it goes,” she said, bored, “or don’t. It’s not like I care.”

“Hey!” Oswald called after her, sticking his head out of the walk-in closet.

“Yeah?” she paused.

“Today’s the fifth, right?”

“Yup.”

“Try the corner of thirtieth and York. The Peregrinator’s Club there is having its monthly charity luncheon. It’s open-door with almost no security, but lots of rich people showing off how philanthropic they are. Should be easy pickings.”

Selina grinned. “Thanks. And, you’re _welcome_.”

~~~~~

“OK, note for the future, Ed Nygma is not allowed within ten feet of anything flammable,” Harvey announced as he stomped up to Jim’s desk.

“He’s still in a bad mood, huh?” Jim asked, wincing as Harvey flicked ash off his slightly singed elbow.

“A _bad mood_? Are you _kidding_? We passed bad mood two days ago with the grumbling under his breath and sad songs on the radio. Yesterday, he was in a _nasty_ mood, snapping at anyone who came too close. _Today_? Today is in its own category.”

Jim raised his hands in surrender, “Point taken.”

“We need to _do_ something, Jim,” Harvey insisted.

“Do what?”

“I don’t know! You’re the one who comes up with the genius plans around here.”

Jim pointed a finger at himself as if to say, _who_ , _me_?

“Hey, Harvey, you pick a fight with your toaster this morning?” Lee appeared behind Harvey, squinting curiously at the scorched patch on his jacket.

“Lee!” Harvey and Jim chorused, nearly identical expressions of relief on their faces.

“Hi...” Lee trailed off, instantly suspicious.

“Just the bright, intelligent, emotionally astute person we were looking for,” Jim smiled too wide, going for innocent and missing by a mile.

“Uh-huh,” Lee crossed her arms, unimpressed, “What do you want?”

“Nothing!” Jim quickly assured her, “ _We_ don’t want anything but, uh, there is someone in this building who sure could use your help.”

Lee followed the way Harvey’s eyes flicked over towards the crime lab and put the pieces together. “No way, I am _not_ talking to Ed for you,” she declared.

“How did you– never mind,” Jim shook his head. “Why won’t you?”

“Because his problems are his problems, and I’m not going to bother someone who’s clearly working through a difficult time.”

“You wouldn’t be bothering him,” Harvey argued, “You’d be....giving him a shoulder to cry on.”

“What’s wrong with _your_ shoulder?” Lee shot back.

“Ed hates my shoulders,” Harvey replied, “Well, he hates _me_.”

“It’s true,” Jim confirmed.

“And he likes you,” Harvey went on.

“You would be doing the whole department a service,” Jim wheedled, “He’s a danger to himself and others.”

“He tried to light me on _fire_ ,” Harvey confirmed, tone plaintive.

Lee raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you deserve it?” she asked coolly.

“No!”

Lee’s eyebrow went higher.

“Ok, maybe I deserved it a little bit,” Harvey relented, “but _seriously_. The guy’s a wreck. I mean, do you know what he suggested was the cause of death on a vic who came in yesterday? ‘Excessive trust in humanity.’”

Lee winced, “Yikes.”

“Listen,” Jim reached out, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her in close, “If you could just....talk to him. Maybe get his mind off of things.”

“And why can’t _you_ do it?” Lee asked, crossing her arms.

“Well, the thing is, he’s having, uh, boyfriend problems,” Jim admitted.

“I’m aware...” Lee prodded.

“And of the three of us here, you’re the one with the most experience in that arena,” Harvey added helpfully.

Lee cast a long-suffering look down at Jim, “Don’t I ever.”

He smiled sweetly up at her and she sighed, patting his cheek. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll talk to him....but only because I’m a doctor, and it’s my duty to care for hurt people.”

“You’re the best,” Jim smiled, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist as she stepped away.

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved a hand dismissively but returned the smile.

“Hey!” Captain Barnes’ voice boomed out from his office. “Bullock, Gordon, we’ve got a homicide on the docks. Looks like it could be related to organized crime. Grab forensics and get on it.”

Jim opened his mouth to suggest that, possibly, they didn’t really need forensics right this minute, but Barnes had already slammed his office door shut.

Harvey sent up a prayer and took a swig from his flask.

“Have fun, boys!” Lee waved cheerily at them as she made her escape.

“Hey, when we get back, you’re still going to –” Jim made a vague hand gesture that presumably meant ‘talk to Ed until he stops acting like he’s going to kill everyone around him.’

“Of course! Assuming that you all come back in one piece....” Lee turned her hands palms up and shrugged, like she wasn’t all too sure about that outcome.

“He’s not...he couldn’t....I mean, the guy’s _scrawny_ ,” Harvey pointed out as they grabbed their jackets, “If he actually tried to kill us, we could stop him, no sweat.”

“I dunno, Harv, he’s already 1 and 0 with you,” Jim said, pointing to Harvey’s burnt elbow.

“Dammit,” Harvey groaned. “Just promise that if he murders me you’ll avenge my death.”

“I will,” Jim promised solemnly. Harvey nodded, and the two headed down to see if they could extract Ed from his lab without inciting mayhem.

~~~~~

“Male, early forties, Caucasian, his chest appears to have torn open....”

Ed rattled off the facts in a dull tone of voice, barely even looking at the corpse in front of him.

“Chest ripped open, huh? That’s pretty interesting, right?” Jim prompted Ed with an encouraging smile.

Ed grumbled noncommittally. “It’s professional, clearly. Probably something symbolic if there were any organs removed...” Ed reached into his toolkit to find something to pry the chest cavity further open with.

“Got a wallet on him?” Harvey asked cautiously, not wanting to get too close to Ed when he was holding sharp metal implements.

Ed dug in the dead man’s pocket and produced a ragged leather wallet, handing it up to Harvey without a word.

“Couple of bucks, some stubs from the Gotham Derby, receipt from the Sure Bet Casino and...got an ID,” Harvey announced as he pulled out a card from the wallet’s detritus. “This sorry fella is one Sam Oliver Rhee.”

Ed froze, midway through jamming pliers into the corpse’s chest. “Sorry?”

“I said, Sam Oliver Rhee,” Harvey repeated.

“No, I mean – his initials. S. O. Rhee. Sorhee – sorry. It’s just an odd coincidence I suppose....” What little interest Ed had evidenced quickly faded and he returned to his work.

There was a wet snap a minute later as he succeeded in prying open the chest cavity enough to look inside. He heaved a disappointed sigh and said, dejected, “I was hoping there might be a bomb.”

“ _Hoping_?” Jim and Harvey asked in skeptical and horrified tones, respectively.

“Yes, it would be clever to pack some sort of explosive device inside a corpse and include a proximity trigger so when the police investigate, it takes out a few cops along with destroying the evidence. But, nothing,” Ed sighed again, deeply. “Just more of life’s disappointments.”

He perked up slightly a moment later as he noted, “Though there seems to be something jammed in his aorta...”

“Bit of a hot dog maybe?” Harvey suggested, “Sure be less paperwork if we can chalk this up to an accidental death, choking on his dinner.”

“No, detective, it appears to be some sort of paper. Also, your understanding of human digestive anatomy frankly alarms me.”

“And are you forgetting that his chest was _ripped open_?” Jim asked Harvey as Ed continued to fiddle with the dead body’s internal organs.

“Oh, yeah...” Harvey nodded sagely.

“I won’t know until Dr. Thompkins begins her autopsy and I can retrieve the evidence,” Ed said in a monotone, peeling his gloves off with a snap and stomping away without another word.

“I really hope a nice corpse and a talk with Lee gets him out of his funk,” Harvey sighed.

“Amen,” Jim agreed.

~~~~~

“Aaaand there you go!” Lee succeeded in extracting what appeared to be a folded piece of laminated paper from the corpse’s heart. She handed it to Ed, who unfolded it with mild interest.

“It say anything?” she asked as she continued her examination.

“Yes....” Ed was staring hard at the paper, and there was an expression on his face that Lee couldn’t quite interpret. “It appears to be...” Ed hesitated, his tone somewhere between apprehensive and hopeful, “a riddle.”

“A riddle? Let me see.” Lee came around the corner of the table and peered over Ed’s shoulder.

The note read:

“I’m impossible at my root

Fifty Romans couldn’t find me

Not a single warrior

Not even five late Greeks

Not two irrational men and their seven hundred and eighteen most irrational cousins

But maybe...you”

“Huh.” Lee tapped a pair of forceps against her palm thoughtfully, “Can you make anything of it?”

“Not as of yet...but I will.” Ed sealed the note in an evidence bag before retrieving his own tools to begin taking forensic samples from the remains.

“Well, in the meantime...” Lee began casually, “Is there anything you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Why would there be?” Ed shot back, not meeting her eyes.

Lee shrugged. “You just seem a little troubled? Like something happened? Maybe with your boyfriend?”

“What do you know about my...boyfriend.” Ed looked like that last word had left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Nothing, actually. Except that he might be a little bit of a jerk, if he’s the reason you’re upset.”

Ed sighed and made to run a hand across his brow, only remembering in the nick of time that it was sticky with the dead man’s blood. “I appreciate your solidarity, Dr. Thompkins, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” she said gently, “Just know that I’m here if you ever do want to talk.”

Ed gave an affirmative grunt before turning his attention once again to the slightly bloody note in its evidence bag, his brow furrowed in thought.

He returned to his work but froze a few minutes later, midway through investigating the cadaver’s fingernails. He dropped the body’s hand with a clunk to the table, dragging off his gloves and scrambling for a pen and paper. He scribbled something down and gasped as Lee rounded the table.

“Did you figure it out?” She tried to catch a glimpse at whatever had him so worked up, but wasn’t tall enough to see over his hunched shoulders, “The weird murder note thing?”

“What?” Ed turned jerkily, blinking at her like a deer staring down headlights. “Oh, um, no, I just....I realized...I forgot to return a library book!” Ed spun in a confused circle before diving towards his coat, dragging one of the sleeves on, realizing it was backwards, and then tearing it back off again and tossing it over his shoulder.

“So, if you don’t mind,” Ed shoved his glasses up his nose, eyes a little wild, “I’ll just go and...take care of that. Yes. I’ll...see you later!”

And he was out the door before Lee could say a word.

She shook her head and picked her scalpel back up, muttering, “Must be one hell of a late fee.”

~~~~~

“An impossible root.”

Oswald jumped, banging his knees on the underside of the thick mahogany table at the sound of that accusatory tone in what had, a moment earlier, been an empty room.

“Ed!” he said a little breathlessly as he pushed his chair aside with a loud scrape and turned towards the voice.

Ed let the door to the secret passage swing shut behind him as he stepped forward, features hard and unreadable in the flickering firelight as he continued, “Fifty Romans, five late Greeks, irrational men – I was going about it all the wrong way. Thinking the answer was in the story. I didn’t see it at first.”

“What didn’t you see?” Oswald asked, heart nearly beating out of his chest at just the sight of his erstwhile boyfriend.

“The riddle. It’s not about the words, it’s about the numbers.” Ed pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, stabbing at the writing on it as he explained, “An impossible root – that is, the root of negative one. So, ‘i.’ Fifty romans – the Roman numeral for 50 is L. No warrior – zero. Five late Greeks, that is, five Romans, so the Roman numeral for five – V. The irrational men, 2 and 718 of them, so 2.178 – the irrational number ‘e’. And...you.”

He held the paper out, with the answer written upon it: “i L0Ve you”

Slightly hesitantly, Ed continued, “You...you left me a love letter in the chest cavity of a partially eviscerated degenerate gambler.”

Oswald nodded meekly.

“That is so romantic,” Ed said, sounding a little choked up.

Oswald made to take a step forward, but Ed threw up a hand. He gestured to the paper and asked sternly, “Did you write this yourself?”

“Yes!” Oswald assured him, “Absolutely! I mean, I had to do a little Googling to remember some of the numbers, but other than that I can assure you it came...from the heart." Oswald waited for the pun to sink in. 

Ed’s eyes lit up and he whispered, "Oh, _Oswald_..." before lurching forward, taking Oswald’s face in both hands and kissing him passionately. 

When they parted for air, Oswald breathed against Ed’s lips, "So, does this mean you forgive me?"

Ed drew back, expression shuttering. “I...I want to, Oswald. I really do, but...we still have to talk about what happened. About what you said to me –”

“I’m so sorry, Ed,” Oswald apologized in a rush, hands fluttering over Ed’s arms but not quite daring to touch him. “I didn’t mean what I said, I didn’t. I _love_ to hear what you’re thinking, even if I don’t always follow it. It’s just that when I’ve had long days surrounded by prattling idiots, I... I just need some quiet.”

“That’s...reasonable,” Ed conceded.

“But it’s not an excuse,” Oswald continued, “I should never have vented my frustrations on you. I think.... the thing is, when we’re together, I’m so _happy_ – I’m not the way I usually am. I get _angry_ , and I lash out at everyone around me, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to keep from doing that to you but...I guess I haven’t really changed.”

“I don’t want you to change, Oswald.” Ed’s brow wrinkled as he seemed to search carefully for his next words, “The dark parts of you were what drew me to you in the first place. It’s what makes us a matching set....I understand why you were angry, and that it wasn’t directed at me. But it wasn’t just what you said about the riddles, it was that I realized I felt taken for granted. I felt used, like something less than essential, just a plaything or, or a dog to be kicked out when he stops being entertaining.”

Oswald shook his head frantically, but Ed powered on, “It felt like you’d become the center of my life, but I was just on the periphery of yours.”

“Ed, that couldn’t be further from the truth. You are _always_ on my mind. And I apologize for not making my gratitude for everything you do for me clear – because I _am_ grateful, Ed. Maybe I have been taking you for granted lately, but that’s only because I can’t imagine a life, a world, without you there by my side.”

Ed looked down, fingers worrying the edge of the now-crumpled paper upon which he’d written the answer to Oswald’s riddle. He raised his head and lifted the paper, looking Oswald squarely in the eyes as he asked, "Did you really mean it? What...what you said here?"

"I do mean it, Ed. I..." Oswald cleared his throat and squared his shoulders as he declared, "I love you, Ed, and I don't want to spend another second without you." 

The silence following that was so complete that Oswald swore he could hear the gears whirring in Ed’s brain behind that blank expression.

Then the sharp icy lines on Ed’s face gave way and he smiled down at Oswald as he said, “I forgive you.”

Oswald’s knees nearly gave out on him with the tidal wave of relief that followed Ed’s words, but luckily, he quickly found himself enveloped in a familiar embrace.

“In the spirit of not taking me for granted...could we go back to my place?” Ed asked, hopeful. “I know it’s not as grand as here but it’s more convenient for me and–”

“Of _course_ , Ed. Whatever you want.” If Ed asked for the moon right now, Oswald would tell his men to go shake down NASA for a rocket ship.

“I want to make up for lost time...” Ed murmured, leaning in so his lips brushed against the shell of Oswald’s ear, making him shiver, “I want _you_ , laid out underneath me in my bed, completely taken apart and thoroughly debauched...” Ed trailed a finger across Oswald’s jaw and down his neck to hook into his collar, “Can you make that happen for me?”

It took everything Oswald had not to gulp visibly, and the only answer he could muster was a fervent, “ _Yes_.”


	4. Chapter 4

 

A series of short raps on Ed’s door the next morning jolted him unwillingly into consciousness.

“Ugh, Chipotle,” Ed groaned, reaching for his glasses on the bedside table.

“Wha.....hmm?” Oswald replied, still partly asleep.

“My neighbor, Mrs. Gillipse, her ferret. He escaped a few days ago and ended up under my couch. I bet he got out again, and she’s here looking for him.”

“But....Chipotle?” Oswald asked, still confused.

“His owner named him that because he looks like a burrito,” Ed explained as he dragged a robe on and headed for the door.

“Oh. That makes sense,” Oswald concluded seriously, before burying his head back in his pillow to drown out the loud scraping racket of the door being pulled open.

“Mrs. Gill– oh! You’re not a burrito!” Ed exclaimed, voice higher than usual.

That non sequitur didn’t raise any flags for Oswald, but when a familiar voice replied, “Um....no?” he nearly fell out of bed.

“I- sorry, Detective Gordon, I thought you were a ferret,” Ed explained unhelpfully to a very confused Jim. “What, uh, what are you doing here? At my apartment? Early in the morning? On my day off?”

There was a pause where Jim considered asking about the ferret comment, but he thought better of it and just said, “I’m here because Lee thought you seemed upset when you left yesterday, and she was worried about you. So, she asked me to stop by and make sure you were ok.” Jim looked at Ed’s disheveled hair and the robe he was clutching closed across his chest and added, “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“Yes, well, no harm done – I’m quite alright, so, bye!” Ed tried to yank the door shut but Jim threw an arm out to stop him.

Oswald slowly pulled the covers up over his head, hoping he could pass as a lumpy pillow if the detective managed to get into the apartment.

“Hey, just – are you ok, really?” Jim asked, voice earnest and genuinely concerned. It made Oswald want to punch him in the kidneys. “Is your ex giving you any trouble?”

“Oh, my, uh, ex isn’t an ex anymore. We made up! Things are just dandy so if you –” Ed reached for the door but Jim once again blocked his path, sticking his leg into the doorway.

“You’re back together? But just the other day you were a wreck –”

“He’s here!” Ed almost yelled as he cut Jim off, “He is here, in my apartment, right now. So, if you would just –”

Jim’s voice took on an overprotective-big-brother note as he said, “Really? Well, I’d sure like to meet him,” as he tried once again to step past Ed.

Ed bodily stopped him, throwing his arms out as he said in slightly panicked tones, “He’s, uh, not really wearing anything!”

That had Jim falling back.

“Yup! Not a stitch of clothing here. So, I think it’s best if you were on your way, I’llseeyoulater _bye_!” Ed finished in a rush as he finally managed to slam the door shut in Jim’s face with a resounding clang.

Ed slumped against the slab of steel, taking a deep breath and waiting for the sound of Jim’s retreating footsteps. When the coast was clear, he gave a weak thumbs up to Oswald, who was peeking out from beneath the comforter.

“Well, _that_ was a close call,” Oswald observed, flinging the covers aside and sitting up.

“Yes, it was,” Ed agreed. A smile began to twitch at the corner of his lips. “It _really_ was.” He was grinning now, exhilaration taking the place of nervousness.

Oswald found himself smiling back. He stood and crossed the floor to lean into Ed’s personal space as he asked, a purr in his voice, “Was that exciting for you? Almost being caught with one of Gotham’s most notorious criminals?”

“Yes,” Ed breathed, eyes going dark even as the morning sun filled the apartment. “And don’t sell yourself short,” he added, “You’re definitely _the_ most notorious criminal in Gotham.”

“Oh, Eddie, you say the sweetest things...” Oswald murmured, before dragging him down into a kiss.

~~~~~

Two days later, a door slammed somewhere deep inside the house’s walls, and Oswald knew even before Ed came stomping into the room that he was in a dark mood.

 “How was work?” Oswald asked cautiously as Ed blew through the door to the secret passage.

“Well, it was perfectly fine until _Officer Vettriano_ ,” Ed spat the name out with venom, “Decided to take it upon himself to question the quality of my work methods.” Ed rubbed at his shoulder, the movement apparently unconscious as his lip curled in anger.

Oswald felt a cold fury flicker to life in his gut, and he asked in a faux-calm voice, “This Officer Vettriano. Did he...lay hands on you?”

“What? Oh, yes, just a bit.” Ed’s hand slipped from his shoulder almost guiltily. “It’s no worse than what I’ve dealt with before from those _boars_ in blue.”

Oswald opened his mouth, looking furious and feeling twice that, but Ed held up a hand, saying, “Please, let’s not talk about it anymore. An ignoramus like that isn’t worth the breath we’d waste on him.”

Oswald nodded stiffly, “As you wish.” But his insides still boiled, and even as Ed launched into a detailed explanation of the significance of the fungal growths from a dockside murder scene he was investigating, cogs were turning in Oswald’s brain as to how he might vent his anger... _productively_.

~~~~~

“Detective Gordon, how can I help you?” Ed asked without taking his eye from the lens of his microscope as Jim cracked open the door to the forensics lab the next morning.

“I’d like to see the evidence for the Pinker case.”

“Isn’t Officer Vettriano working that?” Ed asked, tone dipping from pleasant to irritated.

“Yeah, he was, but now he’s on medical leave, so Harvey and I are taking over.”

“Hmm?” Ed looked up with interest. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He got attacked last night. Couple of guys, dark alley... he must have pissed somebody off because they smashed all his fingers. The docs aren’t sure if his hands will ever heal entirely.” Jim shook his head. It was a shame, especially considering how perpetually short-handed the GCPD was, to lose an officer in a freak incident like this.

However, instead of looking horrified or shocked at the news, Ed looked almost... _delighted_? Ed seemed to realize the inappropriateness of his expression at the same time as Jim was about to comment on it.

“Ed–”

“I’m sorry, Detective, that’s terrible news,” Ed’s expression schooled itself into something more solemn. “I’m just... engaging in a little schadenfreude, it’s quite unprofessional, I apologize.”

“Right...” Jim shook his head. “Vettriano may not be the easiest guy to get along with, but he didn’t deserve that.”

“No, no, of course not,” Ed nodded seriously, but Jim could swear there was still some amusement playing in the depths of his eyes.

“Mmm...” Jim couldn’t shake a nagging sense of something-is-not-right, an intuition honed over years of putting his life on the line, and one he’d learned not to ignore. “Thanks, Ed,” he said with a bland smile as he accepted the evidence box Ed had just retrieved, “See ya around.”

~~~~~

Oswald received a text from Ed as he was on his way home from a bit of business on the docks saying, “Waiting for you, in your room.” He smiled down at his phone and shooed Gabe off as soon as they marched through the house’s doors.

He looked into his room to find Ed curled up in the middle of his bed, sock-footed and in his shirt-sleeves. It was one of Oswald’s favorite levels of Ed-undress, something he thought Ed had probably picked up on.

As soon as Oswald shut the door behind him, Ed said fondly, “You know, though I appreciate the symbolic justice of Vettriano losing the function in his hands...you didn’t have to do that for me.”

“Of course I didn’t _have_ to – I wanted to.” Oswald kicked off his own shoes and shucked his jacket, clambering onto the bed to sit across from Ed. “And I know that you could have dealt with that oaf on your own if you wanted, but I figured, after that unfortunate misadventure with Miss Kringle and then your bit of antique theft, it might be better for you not to get your hands dirty. No need for you to feel any heat from the GCPD when I’ve got dime a dozen goons who love breaking peoples fingers and are halfway into a jail cell already.”

“You’re so thoughtful.”

“I’m trying,” Oswald admitted, privately adding in his head that he was still atoning for how he’d acted those terrible weeks ago, when he’d driven Ed away.

“You’re succeeding,” Ed assured him. He bit his lower lip, and Oswald noticed the way his fingers were nervously threading through the tassels of one of the bed’s throw pillows.

“Is there something else you wanted to say, Ed?” Oswald asked carefully.

“There is,” Ed admitted, setting the pillow aside and clasping his hands in his lap, businesslike.

His determined stance made Oswald a touch nervous, and what he said next didn’t much help: “This just cemented something for me. Something I’d been thinking for a while, but wasn’t ready to say. But I’m ready now.”

“Alright...” Oswald nudged him gently.

Ed took a deep breath and began, “Before I met you, I had some vague, willowy shadow in my mind of who I wanted to be with. Someone like Kristen Kringle, maybe. Some person who was my... my _soulmate_. I don't know who they were but... they weren't you.”

Oswald tried not to visibly panic at that, even as Ed began to wave his hands, looking frustrated.

“No, no, that didn’t come out right. What I’m trying to say is...you aren't something I made up. You aren't a dream, Oswald. I'm not in love with just the idea of you, because I never _had_ an idea of you.  
I just love... _you_.”

For Oswald, the world turned suddenly to static, and there was just an endless loop crackling in his mind of Ed’s last words.

Ed squinted and said, “I'm not generally a master of reading body language, but I’m fairly certain you're freaking out.”

“ _Ed_ –” Oswald choked on the word and had to clear his throat before he could continue. “You know how I feel about you, but– to have you say it back, I... I mean, I’ve wanted to tell you that I love you _constantly_ , every day. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, hire a skywriter to let all of Gotham know that I love you more than anything. Because I love you _so much_ , Edward Nygma.”

“Well that’s....neat,” was Ed’s breathless reply.

“To say the least,” Oswald agreed.

“So...can I kiss you now?” Ed asked, as if there was a possibility Oswald would say no.

Oswald rolled his eyes and leaned forward, tipping Ed back into the pillows as he kissed him deeply. Ed wrapped his arms around Oswald’s back and pulled their chests tight together, before hooking a leg around Oswald’s and flipping them over.

“I’ve got a riddle for you,” he panted into Oswald’s mouth even as he continued to steal kisses.

“Of course you do,” Oswald sighed, mentally resigning himself to a lifetime of mind games, and realizing that it was a positively enchanting prospect.

“I can’t be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two. What am I?”

“I think I know the answer, but....how about you _show_ me?” Oswald grinned wickedly up at Ed, and Ed took the hint. He pressed Oswald into the mattress with a hard kiss, and proceeded to show him the answer, in great detail.

~~~~~

“Oh, _no_ ,” Harvey pointed a finger sharply at Jim as he approached their desks, “No, whatever it is, no.”

“What? I haven’t even said anything!” Jim protested.

“You don’t have to. I _know_ that look on your face. It’s your ‘I want to go poke a hornet’s nest because justice’ look. Whenever you get _that look_ , we end up strung upside down in a slaughterhouse by assassins.”

“That only happened _once_. Besides,” Jim quickly moved on, “I don’t want to do anything stupid.”

“Uh huh...”

“I just want to go take a look around in Ed’s lab while he’s gone.”

“You– what?” Harvey squinted at him, “The hell do you wanna do that for? We’re still supposed to be looking into the egg robbery.”

“Well, I’ve got this feeling –”

“Oh, boy –”

“– that something’s up with Ed, something more than just whatever’s going on in his personal life. He’s acting weird.”

“Jim. Do you really need me to point out that Ed is literally always acting weird? It’s his normal.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, actually, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.”

“I think he had something to do with the Fabergé egg robbery,” Jim told him anyway.

“Oh my god!” Harvey covered his ears with his hands as he hissed, “Can you go more than, like, two days without accusing a member of the GCPD of criminal activity?”

“C’mon Harvey,” Jim coaxed, “You _know_ this was an inside job. No matter what the evidence seems to say, you can _feel_ it, in your gut.”

“My gut doesn’t feel anything, anymore,” Harvey countered, “A steady diet of whiskey will do that.”

Jim fixed him with his most disappointed stare, and waited.

Harvey broke in under a minute. “You’re turning into a real paranoid bastard, Jim, you know that?”

“There’s a bad-tempered old detective around here who would normally tell me that that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah, well, if you see him, give him a knock upside the head,” Harvey sighed, “I’m sure he needs it. Now, let’s go snooping.”

“We’re detectives, so it’s ‘investigating,’” Jim corrected him with a smirk as they stood and ambled casually down the hallway.

“Is that gonna be your defense if Nygma catches us going through his stuff?”

“No,” Jim smiled innocently over his shoulder at Harvey as he gently turned the knob to Ed’s lab, “I’ll say it was your idea.”

“Spectacular,” Harvey grumbled as they stepped into the room and quietly shut the door behind them. “So, are we looking for anything in particular? Maybe plans to the museum with the vault circled and ‘egg heist’ written on top?”

“That’d be nice, yeah,” Jim replied, tugging open the drawers in Ed’s desk. They were all locked, except the top one, which was filled with paperclips, loose staples, and, inexplicably, a kitchen timer shaped like a chicken. He looked carefully through the papers on the desk, but didn’t find anything out of place.

“Bingo,” Harvey exclaimed, startling Jim into dropping the weekly calendar he’d been inspecting.

“Shh!” Jim admonished.

“I’ve got his phone,” Harvey continued, more quietly. Jim joined him, where he’d been rifling through the pockets of the lab coats hung on a rack near the door.

“Locked,” Jim muttered as Harvey turned the screen on and it prompted them for a password, “Naturally.” They were about to give it up as a lost cause when the screen flashed with a new message. It read “How do you feel about fish for dinner?” and was from a contact named “Mr. P.”

“Mr. P?” Jim mused aloud, “The boyfriend, you think?”

“Probably. Can you think of anyone with a last name that starts with ‘P’?”

Jim suddenly thought “Pennyworth,” and was instantly mentally scarred.

“Never mind,” he shook his head, trying to rid it of terrifying imagery, “We’re not here to look for gossip, we’re here to see if Ed’s involved in the theft of the egg.”

“Uh huh, well, frankly, I think we’d have better luck looking through the crazy calls than rooting around in here any longer.”

Jim’s expression turned animated and Harvey flinched, “Oh hell, why did I even mention it.”

The so-called “crazy calls” were what Harvey called the police tip line. He called it that not just because the things people said when they called in were crazy, but because if you listened to the stuff for too long, you started to wonder if, just maybe, there really were secret radioactive government-trained alligators massing for an uprising in the sewers.

“Last time you went through the crazies, you ended up staking out the bridge for two days, looking for illegal shipments of heroin disguised as talcum powder!” he pointed out as he followed Jim across the station floor.

“That was a mistake,” Jim admitted, “But I won’t do that again.”

“Famous last words,” Harvey mumbled, but didn’t stop Jim from giving the desk sergeant his most charming smile and asking for the last few weeks’ tip line notes.

The two sat back down at their desks with a stack apiece and began to dig, Jim with gusto, Harvey with resignation.

As the morning dragged on, the two began to share the more colorful stories they stumbled across.

“Apparently, JFK is still alive, and works at the McDonalds on twelfth,” Jim told Harvey with faux-seriousness, “How the mighty have fallen.”

“Hey, did you know that the government can actually control the weather?” Harvey asked, “That’s why weather predictions are never accurate, because Congress likes to shake things up just to screw with us.”

“You know, we work for the government, they should tell us these things. Oh, guess what, there’s a man in Central Park who’s been turning water into wine.”

“When he can turn it into a fine, single-malt scotch, then I’ll start listening.” Harvey turned another page. “And look, finally something related to our robbery... Ah, good. This guy says the egg was actually an alien hatchling, and his Rotiflox forefathers came and took him home.”

“Uh, bon voyage, I guess?”

“And another one: the egg was stolen by a giant, invisible bird that nests on the top floor of Wayne Tower.”

Jim chuckled and reached for his coffee, but froze mid-motion. “Hey, Harvey?” Jim said slowly.

“Mmm?”

“What if the bird wasn’t giant or invisible?”

Jim saw realization dawn in Harvey’s eyes and continued, “It makes sense. Penguin’s the biggest player in town, and he’s gotta have at least a few guys on the force in his pocket.”

Harvey scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I dunno....big, flashy heists aren’t really his style....”

“Maybe he’d expanding his business.”

“Yeah, but we also haven’t heard anything about a big sale going down, or cash flowing into his operation. If he had thirty million dollars in hot merchandise, wouldn’t he try to get if off his hands as fast as possible?”

“Maybe, but maybe not. He’s nothing if not unpredictable....” Jim stood up, suddenly filled with righteous determination, “I’ll go talk to him.”

“You don’t have any evidence!” Harvey said, standing and holding his hands out like Jim was a spooked horse.

“I’m not going to arrest him, I’m just...going to have a chat with an old friend over my lunch break.”

“No, _I_ will,” Harvey decided, voice firm. “You’ve gotten in too deep with the slimy son of a bitch before, and I’m not gonna let it happen again.”

“Aw, Harvey, it’s almost like you care.”

“Yeah, yeah...” Harvey grumbled, dragging his coat on.

“Ok. So, you’ll be subtle about it?”

“Of course. I always am.”

“Right,” Jim nodded. “And by ‘subtle,’ I assume you mean that you’re gonna barge in there and accuse him of grand theft?”

“No,” Harvey scoffed. “I’m gonna accuse him of bribing a police officer.”

“Uh-huh....and you say that _I_ take risks.”

“Ah, don’t worry. Best case, Penguin panics and contacts his man, we can have a look out, maybe catch the guy. Worst case, he gets nervous, and cuts things off with his stool pigeon. Either way, we clean up any possible mole problem.”

“Actual worst case,” Jim cut in, “Penguin hires someone to hit you with a car and make it look like an accident, as punishment for messing around in his business.”

“C’mon, he’s not gonna kill a cop. Pretty sure he won’t, anyway.”

“Well, as long as you’re _pretty sure_....”

“Relax, Jimmy! It’s probably nothing, and I just get an excuse to screw with my least favorite king of the underworld.”

Harvey tipped his hat at a jaunty angle and headed off with a wave. Jim slumped back down in his chair and muttered, “Well, this is gonna end well.”

~~~~~

“Thanks for meeting me,” Ed told Oswald as he stepped out of the secret passage.

“Of course,” Oswald smiled, “It’s not like it’s a great hardship to have lunch with you instead of Butch. Have you _seen_ him eat?” Oswald shuddered.

“I’m not terribly hungry,” Ed admitted, hands fluttering nervously at his sides as he began to pace in short bursts along the near edge of the table.

“What’s wrong?” Oswald reached out to take Ed’s hands, pulling him to a standstill. “Is there something I can do?”

“Unclear,” Ed replied mechanically, his eyes glazed and thoughts clearly elsewhere, “But I suspect that certain members of the GCPD believe that my loyalties no longer lie entirely with them.”

“What?” Oswald’s eyebrows flew up, and he instinctively pulled Ed closer, “Why do you think that?”

 “It was just this morning. I went out to get some coffee that didn’t taste like the sewer water they serve at the station, and when I returned, my calendar was as at obtuse angle to my lamp.”

“And....?”

“And, I always keep it at an _acute_ angle. Obviously, someone had gone through my things while I was away....” Ed pulled away from Oswald in order to keep pacing, one hand pressed against his chin as he thought.

Oswald almost suggested that Ed had perhaps bumped the calendar out of position himself and was getting worked up over nothing, but quickly realized that would be stupid on multiple levels.

Instead, he asked delicately, “Alright. Do you want to take immediate action, or wait to see how this plays out? As you know, I’m always happy to send a few assassins to take out whomever you please. I think Zsasz has been feeling a bit neglected lately....”

“No,” Ed shook his head sharply, “Preemptive action now would be a mistake. We’d just be showing our hand to people who haven’t yet called our bluff. No, the smart thing to do would be to wait, and gather more information.”

“Absolutely,” Oswald agreed, still watching Ed with some apprehension. Although Oswald had suspected that Ed’s assistance to his criminal operations wouldn’t go unnoticed forever, he wasn’t sure how aware Ed had been of the fact that the day he joined the Penguin’s team, his life at the GCPD was stamped with an expiration date.

Ed finally stopped pacing, taking a deep breath. He reached out idly, fingers tracing the grain of the fine old mahogany table, appreciating the dark gleam of the expensive wood.

“You know, I’m so rarely here during the day...everything looks different in the sunlight,” he noted, turning towards the head of the table and stretching a hand out to caress the smooth carvings etched into the throne-like chair.

“It does,” Oswald agreed. “I once had a colleague who insulted my choice in furniture, however.”

“Really? He’s no longer in a position to complain, I trust?” Ed asked with a sly smile.

“Indeed. He had an unfortunate run in with something sharp and metallic soon after. He thought the chair was a bit much – what do you think, do you like it?”

“Oh, yes,” Ed nodded, “I find it suitably regal.”

“Good....” Oswald drummed up a bit of courage as he continued, “Because I’m actually thinking of installing a second one next to it.”

Ed glanced up at him from where he was admiring the details of the wood carving. “A second one? Why?”

Oswald smiled at Ed’s earnest confusion as he replied, “For you, silly. Unless you’d prefer to sit in my lap,” he winked.

Ed still seemed nonplussed as he replied slowly, “You want... _me_...to sit here...with you? I know we’d spoken of me joining you but I didn’t think it would be as....as....”

“As my equal,” Oswald confirmed, reaching out to take Ed’s shoulders in hand. “It seems that your time at the GCPD might be coming to an end. And I think it’s high time the people who sit at this table recognize your genius.”

“Genius? But... Ed trailed off, blinking down at Oswald.

“Ed, in the last few months, my profit margins have _tripled_ ,” Oswald explained, “Your organizational skills are surpassed by no one. Your solutions to conflict are inspired. And your presence by my side...is irreplaceable. You deserve a place at the head of this table as my partner....in all things.”

Ed’s eyes were wide behind his glasses, his mouth shaped into a perfect “o” of astonishment. After a few more seconds of stunned silence, however, his shock morphed into an expression of determination and Oswald found his crisply ironed shirt being hopelessly wrinkled by Ed’s iron grip. Ed grabbed him roughly, pushing him backwards until Oswald’s knees hit the table and he tipped backwards, and then he was climbing on top of him, the wood creaking beneath their combined weight.

“Say it again,” Ed hissed against Oswald’s lips. “Tell me I’m a genius.”

“You’re a genius,” Oswald echoed immediately, fervently. “I’ve never met a mind like yours.”

“Say you need me.”

“I need you, Ed, and no one else.”

Ed’s breath was hot against Oswald’s mouth and he could almost _taste_ him and –

“Hey, boss,” Gabe called, opening the door a crack and sticking his head in. Apparently unfazed by the sight of his employer sprawled over the table, he continued, “There’s a detective here to talk to you.”

Oswald sighed, reining in his frustration as he met Ed’s eyes with a knowing glance. “Let me guess, Gordon?”

“Bullock,” Gabe corrected him as the sound of Gotham’s most disheveled detective stomping down the hallway grew behind him.

The two disentangled themselves as quickly as they could. With no time to get to the secret passage, Ed pointed down and mouthed, “Under the table?” Oswald nodded swiftly, jerkily adjusting his tie as Ed scampered to hide beneath the thick wooden table. His green sweater was barely out of sight when Harvey came bursting in, blowing past Gabe.

“Detective Bullock,” Oswald greeted him with forced cheer, letting an edge of his violent irritation slip into his tone. “What can I do for you?”

“Cut the pleasantries, Penguin,” Harvey barked, “I know you’ve bought out someone at the GCPD. I want to know who.”

“I resent your unfounded accusation,” Oswald declared with exaggerated dismay. “And even if it were true....” His expression slipped from affronted to sly, “You’d really have to be more specific.”

“Not some beat cop with college loans to pay off. I’m talking someone who _knows_ things.”

“Well, Detective Bullock, _if_ that was true, I don’t see why I would tell you, and thus endanger what would be a highly lucrative arrangement for myself. Hypothetically.”

“How about you tell me out of the spirit of friendship.”

“That would be rather difficult as you and I were never friends.”

Harvey nodded like Oswald had just made a good point. “Well, then, I guess I came all the way here for nothing.”

“I guess you did,” Oswald agreed sharply.

Harvey turned to leave but spun around just before he reached the door, “One more thing.”

Oswald sighed and looked up to the ceiling, just about out of patience, “What?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, uh, Fabergé egg that got stolen out from underneath a GCPD security detail, would you?”

“Only what I saw on the news,” Oswald replied sweetly, “Though I have to say...it was rather careless of you all to misplace such a valuable artifact. You really should keep better track of your things.”

“Well, sometimes _birds_ with _sticky flippers_ come along and take what isn’t theirs...but don’t worry, we’ll catch whatever bonehead did this, I’m sure of it. Adios!” Harvey tipped his hat and went on his way, and none too soon, because Ed was exploding out from under the table nearly before the door had swung shut behind him.

“That obnoxious, whiskey-for-brains, _slovenly_ –” Ed’s face was distorted with rage, his own anger cutting him off as he raised his fists uselessly.

“Deep breaths, Ed,” Oswald patted his arm comfortingly, “He’s gone now, and he clearly doesn’t have anything on me, or any idea that you’re the one who baffled them all.”

Ed simmered down quickly at the gentle praise, fury cooling and turning into thoughtful suspicion. “You’re right, he clearly has no evidence...”

“So, why did he come barging in here, warning me that he’s investigating?” Oswald finished the thought, “Bullock might indeed have whiskey for brains, but he’s been a cop for long enough to know that’s a foolish move.”

Ed shook his head slowly. “They probably think they’ll shake you. That you’ll contact your inside man and warn them perhaps, or even go meet with them.”

Oswald sniffed, “As if I’d be so foolish.”

“Indeed.” Ed’s serious expression morphed into a grin as he added, “Though, to be fair to the good detective...your inside man was actually _hiding under the table_.”

Oswald couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter, and the two quickly devolved into giggles as the ridiculousness of the whole situation settled over them.

Gasping a little and clutching the edge of the table for support, Ed pulled Oswald in close to say in between giggles, “Oswald, my love, would you like to play a little game with me? One where some brave detectives lose miserably and the bad guys have their day?”

 “Why, Ed, darling, I’d like nothing better.”

~~~~~

“He’s heading out again,” Jim told Harvey, peeking out from behind a file folder as he watched Ed slink out the front doors.

“Alert the media,” Harvey drawled.

“C’mon, Harv, this is the third time in a row he’s snuck out like this.”

“You mean, the third time this week he’s left the building at _lunchtime_. Presumably, to _get lunch_. _We_ get lunch, Jim, that doesn’t make us criminals.”

Jim turned to glare at Harvey, who deflected his gaze by lifting a nearby box of donuts in front of his face. “Don’t look at me like that,” he grumbled from behind half a dozen bear claws.

“I’m gonna follow him,” Jim announced, followed by a swoosh as he grabbed his coat.

“Wait....” Harvey groaned, throwing down the pastries, but Jim was already halfway to the door. Harvey heaved a sigh and threw on his own coat, following Jim. On second thought, he paused, turned around, and grabbed the donuts again – no reason he needed to starve on their little impromptu stake-out of their colleague’s lunch hour.

The two jumped in Harvey’s beat-up Buick and squealed around the corner just in time to catch the tail end of Ed’s vintage Chevy.

After following him for a while, Jim realized where they were headed. “He’s...going home,” he said, disappointed.

“Great. Can we go get some hot dogs now?”

“No, Harvey, we have to know _why_ he’s going home in the middle of the day,” Jim insisted with renewed determination.

“No, Jim, we don’t have to know!” Harvey parroted back, exasperated.

“Okay, listen, we’ll just....take a look. At what he’s doing. Just this once, and if we don’t see anything suspicious, I promise I’ll let this go.”

“You _promise_?”

“Scout’s honor,” Jim swore as they parked a block away from Ed’s apartment.

“I’ll bet you actually were a boy scout, too,” Harvey grumbled as he kicked the door open.

“Eagle scout,” Jim admitted. “Now, do you have any binoculars?”

Harvey’s eyebrows flew up. “The hell do you want binoculars for?”

The answer to that, Harvey learned, was: to spy through Ed’s window from the roof of the opposite building with.

“This is stupid. And creepy. And _stupid_ ,” Harvey reiterated as they kneeled on the dusty rooftop, peering over the ledge at the defunct “Toys and Games” sign that still glowed weakly above Ed’s apartment.

Jim chose not to disagree, instead noting, “These aren’t department issue,” as he inspected the binoculars’ lenses.

“No, they aren’t,” Harvey agreed.

Jim frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Really, Harvey? Peeping Tom?”

“Kettle, black?” Harvey shot back.

“This isn’t peeping, this is _detective work_ ,” Jim sniffed, a little haughtily. “ _I_ understand the difference, do you?”

Harvey grumbled something under his breath and scuffed the toe of his shoe against the roof’s gravel.

“What was that?” Jim asked, cocking his head at a mocking angle, until Harvey finally repeated, loudly, “I like bird watching, ok?”

“You...what?” Jim blinked.

“I like watching birds. It relaxes me.”

“What....why....where do birds even live in Gotham? Do they share rent on a penthouse somewhere?”

Harvey rolled his eyes, which Jim thought was pretty rich considering Harvey was the one currently explaining _his_ bird watching habit. “The Park’s got a lot of varieties, but you can spot ‘em on almost any street corner and– you know what, enough of this. Now that you know my deep dark secret, can we go back to peeping on our resident science geek?”

“Well, when you put it like that...” Jim raised the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus until he stopped seeing a gray-green blur and started seeing –

“Christ.” Jim dropped the binoculars.

“Whoa, there!” Harvey snatched them before they could fall, “If you break these I’m taking it out of your paycheck.”

Jim didn’t respond, just rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms as if the pressure could erase the images seared on his retinas.

Harvey glared at Jim for another minute before lifting the binoculars and looking for himself. “What the hell’s got you...” Harvey trailed off as he squinted through the lenses. He slowly lowered them, nodding. “Ok. That’s not what I expected,” he admitted.

“Not what you expected?” Jim echoed, incredulous.

“Listen, Jim, if you lose it every time you see a crime lord bumping uglies with a CSI you’re not gonna last very long in Gotham.”

“I’ve lasted this long, haven’t I? Also, please never ever say ‘bumping uglies’ ever again.”

“No promises,” Harvey grinned. “Now, you wanna keep censoring my language, or bust in there?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not illegal to have sex with suspected criminals, so until we find actual evidence that Nygma’s.... _extra-curricular activities_...impact GCPD security, we can’t do much.”

“But we suspected Penguin had a man in the GCPD, and now he’s _in_ a man from the GCPD and –”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Jim whispered, holding up a hand and praying for the short-term amnesia of a nice, hard blow to the head.

“Seriously, isn’t this enough to at least bring Nygma in?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to grab Nygma without having to deal with Penguin. And do you really want to justify to Captain Barnes arresting the king of Gotham’s underworld and our own top forensic scientist just on our _suspicions_?”

“Good point,” Harvey sighed.

“But we should still tell him what we found. We may not have enough evidence to make any arrests, but we should still alert him to the presence of a possible mole.”

Harvey nodded, heaving himself to his feet, “Alright, then. Let’s go, eagle scout.”

Twenty minutes later, the two walked into the captain’s office.

“Oh boy, Gordon, what bone have you got ahold of today,” Barnes asked before the door had even shut behind them.

“I –” Jim started, turning to Harvey who shrugged and said, “You’ve got The Look, Jim. We all know it.”

Jim decided to leave a conversation about His Look for another day, and instead clasped his hands behind his back and began, “Well, we were suspicious –”

“ _Jim_ was suspicious,” Harvey clarified.

“Alright, _I_ was suspicious that there was a mole in the GCPD.”

“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” Barnes said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. “I’m assuming because you’re _you_ that you investigated?”

Harvey nodded solemnly, as Jim shot a glare in his direction. “Well...yes.”

“Okay. You find anything?”

Jim couldn’t help but smirk. “Other than Harvey’s secret love for bird watching....”

Harvey rounded on Jim, “C’mon, I told you that in confidence!”

“No, you didn’t!”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you have to go telling the first person you see!”

“ _Children_ ,” Barnes closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Can we focus, please.”

Jim immediately stood at attention. “Yes sir.”

Harvey rolled his eyes and slouched as Jim continued, “We’d noticed – _I’d_ noticed,” Jim corrected before Harvey could interrupt, “That Ed was acting a little oddly.”

“Nygma? The nerdy forensics guy?” Barnes clarified.

“Yes. So, long story short.....Harvey and I followed him home on his lunch break, and, uh, looked through his window and found out he....well...” Jim looked to Harvey for assistance.

Harvey picked up the thread, “We found out that Nygma and the Penguin are...well, they’re, you know...” Harvey made some sort of unfortunate hand gesture that Jim chose not to try and decipher.

Barnes frowned. “Gentlemen, since the average age in this room is at least 40, I think we can say the word ‘sex.’”

“Uh, yes sir,” Jim said at the same time Harvey objected, “I am young at _heart_.”

“So, moving past any possible violation of a citizen’s home and privacy you two may have committed,” Barnes continued, pinching the bridge of his nose, “a member of the GCPD – someone with access to all kinds of classified information, evidence, and on-going investigations – is engaged in an intimate relationship with a known criminal?”

“A murderer,” Harvey added helpfully, “Though we’ve never actually been able to pin anything on Penguin.”

“Who is also the current leader of Gotham’s underworld,” Jim continued, “Though....we don’t have any concrete evidence of that, either.”

“So you’ve got jack shit,” Barnes concluded, shuffling some papers.

“Yep,” Harvey confirmed while Jim stared down at his shoes.

“Great.” Barnes looked up and frowned, “So get out of my office until you have something a prosecutor wouldn’t laugh at.”

“Yes sir,” Jim nodded while Harvey gave a half-hearted salute, and the two headed out of the office.

“So....” Harvey flopped down in his desk chair and conjured a half-eaten candy bar from somewhere in his desk, taking a bite out of it before continuing, “How are we gonna get evidence on Nygma? Steal one of his ‘n Penguin’s sex tapes?”

“What?” Jim sputtered, “Why would we– we don’t even know if they– God, no. What we need is something that proves our... _suspect_ –” Jim glanced pointedly around the room, catching no sign of the forensic scientist, “gave classified information to a known criminal, or in any way aided or abetted one of his crimes.”

“’Kay. And we’re going to get that by....?”

“Working the case,” Jim declared, a determined glint in his eye.

“So...elbow grease and a metric ton of foolish hope?”

“Well,” Jim shrugged, “It’s worked for us so far.”

~~~~~

“I want to kiss every freckle on your face,” Ed murmured, leaning in as if to begin the work as he and Oswald lay tangled together in bed, fingers of early sunshine creeping across the covers.

“That could take a long time,” Oswald pointed out, smiling to make sure it was clear that he didn’t actually care about the impracticality.

“Forever, ideally,” Ed smiled softly back at him and Oswald’s stomach did that same dizzying swoop it had done when he first laid eyes on Ed.

It was a perfect moment, so naturally, that's when Ed’s phone began to ring. 

While Oswald groaned and flopped back on the pillows, Ed gasped with delight before sprawling half off the bed to dig in his abandoned slacks for his phone. 

“Edward Nygma speaking,” Ed answered cheerily. “Mmhmm. Just found him, you say...Dead for a few hours...Barbed wire, huh? How _horrible_ ,” Ed turned towards Oswald, giving him an approving nod and a thumbs up. “Yes, of course, I’ll be right there.” Ed hung up and cackled with unrestrained glee, falling back on the bed to grin at Oswald.

“It _begins_ ,” Ed enthused, reaching up to tangle a hand on Oswald’s hair, stroking a thumb along his cheek.

“So it does,” Oswald agreed, with more restraint. Although Ed seemed focused on the liberatory aspects of their grand endeavor – he would, after all, be finally free of the GCPD, his idiot colleagues, and all of society’s many other nonsensical restraints on his genius – but Oswald couldn’t help seeing today as a schedule of shaky dominos in peril of tipping over in the wrong direction.

However, Ed thrived on confidence and praise, so Oswald stowed his concerns beneath a calm smile and covered Ed’s hand with his own. Today was Ed’s plan, and Ed was easily the smartest person Oswald had ever met – if anyone could pull off a scheme as twisted and elaborate as this one, it was Edward Nygma.

~~~~~

“Nygma,” Jim muttered, staring blankly out at the still slightly smoking mess that was the GCPD main floor.

“Nygma,” Harvey agreed, tipping back his flask and then letting out a disgusted noise when he found it was empty.

“How did this even happen?” Jim asked.

“Well, it started with the explosion –”

“No, it started with that body on the docks –

“Right, but what about the octopus?”

Jim drew up short, eyebrows flying up. “Octopus?”

“Oh yeah,” Harvey nodded gravely. “You must have been busy with the marching band during that part.”

“Ah, yes, how could I forget those damn tubas...” Jim pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We never should have brought Penguin in,” Harvey grumbled.

“We didn’t, remember?” Jim reminded him mournfully, “He just showed up on his own...”

Oswald had indeed shown up at the GCPD all on his own, and with highly suspicious timing – Jim and Harvey had just returned from an early morning crime scene with a murder victim who was unusual in several ways. For one thing, he’d been dredged up from the bay, chained down with cement blocks and nearly shredded by the barbed wire he’d been tied up with. And more tellingly, he’d been a mole for the police – a mole who had said just the day before that he had info on Penguin and was ready to squeal if he got a good enough plea bargain.

“The hell are you doing here?” Harvey growled as Oswald made his way up the steps to them, leaning heavily on his cane.

“You know, I just had a _feeling_ that my good old friend Jim Gordon wanted to see me,” Oswald simpered, turning a toothy smile on Jim.

“Uncanny,” Jim deadpanned, “Because I was thinking of bringing you in...for _murder_.”

“Murder?” Oswald’s darkly lined eyes went wide with a performance of shock worthy of a primetime soap opera, “Jim, I’m hurt.”

“No, Ricky Moretti is _hurt_ ,” Jim shot back, grabbing one of the bloodier shots from the crime scene and sticking it in Penguin’s face. “Look familiar?”

Oswald just shrugged, mouth quirked up on one side as if to say, 'sometimes men just end up lacerated with barbed wire and chained to cement blocks, what can you do.' “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Jim.”

Penguin’s knowing grin was chipping away at Jim’s last frayed nerve, and the detective was about one adrenaline rush away from doing something that would probably get him a suspension, but someone else intervened before things could get nasty.

“Excuse me, detectives, but here’s the preliminary analysis on this morning’s victim...” Ed breezed up to the trio, coming to a cheery stop in front of Jim and holding out a file.

Jim did a double take, fingers closing automatically around the file as he realized that Ed and his not-so-secret criminal boyfriend were standing _right next to each other_ , in the middle of a police station, in full view of at least a dozen cops.

There was a moment of tense silence, before Ed turned to Oswald with a chipper smile and said, “Hello! I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Oh, where are my manners,” Penguin held out his hand, “I’m Oswald Cobblepot.”

“Edward Nygma,” Ed grinned back, giving Oswald’s hand a firm shake.

“How nice to meet you,” Penguin beamed.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Ed replied, barely even bothering to hide delight.

Jim and Harvey watched the exchange with shock and outrage by turns, tossing glances to each other that said _what the hell do we do_? and _god do I need a drink_ , respectively.  

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” Oswald continued, as if he and Ed were just two strangers enjoying some pleasant small talk.

“Well, I’m usually down in my lab. But I won’t be here much longer, actually. I gave my notice – today’s my last day.”

“Really?” Oswald asked, all feigned surprise. Jim and Harvey’s surprise was a great deal more genuine.

“You’ve leaving the GCPD?” Jim asked, eyes darting between the two men in front of him, searching for a glimpse of what angle they were playing.

“I am,” Ed said, turning to Jim cheerfully, “I’m going to be pursuing new, exciting avenues of opportunity in my life.”

“I’ll bet,” Harvey growled, and Jim put a warning hand on his shoulder. He wanted to punch one or both of them too, but with zilch for evidence against them, that would only lead to trouble.

However, despite Jim’s forbearance, trouble soon came to the GCPD anyway in the all-too-familiar form of Victor Zsasz.

“I want to file a noise complaint!” the assassin announced grandly as he sauntered through the doors, arms held aloft.

“With who?” a very confused rookie shouted out, to a small chorus of groans from his surrounding fellows.

Zsasz froze, finger raised comically in the air. He pulled his hand down to tap his chin, and then laughed, playfully slapping his own forehead, “Whoops, silly me!” In one smooth motion, he pulled two submachine guns from the folds of his coat, “I guess I’ll be filing it against myself!”

And with that, he began to fire wildly into the station.

Jim and Harvey dived for cover behind their desks, drawing their weapons and waiting for an opening to fire back.

“This isn’t right,” Jim hissed to Harvey, “Zsasz might be crazy, but he’s not an anarchist – who’s his target here? I think –”

Whatever thought Jim was about to voice was cut off as the station was rocked with an explosion, half the wall behind the holding cells exploding outward and showering the GCPD’s occupants with chunks of concrete. As sparks and rock dust flew, Zsasz danced back out the front doors, whistling a merry tune as those officers not unconscious or otherwise incapacitated gave chase. The criminals who weren’t crushed by the falling debris clambered out of the twisted remains of the iron cells, running out of the station after the cops. Jim and Harvey exchanged glances, and then charged out after the whole lot, exploding onto the sidewalk to find a street full of police, felons, honking 18-wheelers, and, most unexpectedly, the entirety of the Gotham High marching band on a deeply ill-timed tour of the city.

Half an hour, three crashed semi-trucks headed to the Gotham Aquarium, and a truly die-hard brass section later, Jim and Harvey dragged themselves off the street and back into the station. Zsasz was gone, a few cops had bullet wounds, and one guy had a concussion from an overzealous trombonist, but so far there were no casualties.

The fact that no one had yet died was probably the only thing that kept Jim from shooting Ed and Oswald on sight when he spotted them sipping from matching GCPD mugs next to the miraculously unharmed coffee-maker, looking as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

“ _You_!” Jim rounded on Ed and Oswald, fists clenched, “You two are behind this!”

Penguin continued drinking his coffee, unconcerned, while Ed just began to laugh. “Behind what?” he giggled, concrete dust in his hair and eyes shining behind his askew glasses, “We’ve been right here the whole time!”

Jim fumed, to angry for words. Harvey was too tired to be quite that angry, and so was able to speak for the both of them as he said, “Don’t care. You’re still going down for this, one way or another.”

“Somehow, I don’t think so...” Ed trailed off, looking at something behind Harvey and smiling devilishly.

Harvey glanced over his shoulder to see what Ed was grinning at and gasped aloud, scrambling for his gun. “Barbara!”

“What?” Jim asked, still staring down Ed and Oswald.

“ _Barbara_!” Harvey repeated, finally freeing his weapon from its holster and pointing it at the slim figure strutting across the floor towards them.

Jim turned, and Barbara gave him a cheery little wave, “Hiya, Jim! Long time, no see.”

Jim drew his gun and raised it, but Barbara just pulled her blue rabbit fur coat tighter around her shoulders, tapping one of her thigh high stilettos against a nearby upended desk.

“Looks like you’ve had quite the day, boys...”

“How’d you get out of Arkham, Barbara?” Jim asked with forced calm.

“The usual way...” she purred, “through the door. And with a perfectly lovely certificate of sanity.”

“You’re _sane_?” Jim’s eyebrows flew up in disbelief.

Barbara pressed a hand to her heart, sighing, “You wound me, Jim.”

“Well, I’d hate to interrupt this reunion,” Oswald piped up, setting his mug aside and grabbing his cane, “So, I’ll just be on my way.”

“We’re not done with you,” Jim growled, swinging back around to glare fiercely at Penguin, who just laughed and breezed by him saying, “I think you’ve got more than enough on your plate for the moment, detective.”

“Please, let me walk you out, Mr. Cobblepot,” Ed grinned, holding out his arm to Oswald.

“How kind,” Penguin grinned back, taking the proffered arm as they made their way out through the rubble.

“A joy, as always, Miss Kean,” Oswald said, pausing next to Barbara to take her hand and kiss the back of it with a wink.

Jim watched the two smiling at each other with a sinking feeling in his gut and the distinct impression that he was in way over his head.

“Farewell, Jim, Harvey!” Ed waved goodbye grandly, “Perhaps we’ll meet again under... _different_ circumstances.”

And with that, he and Oswald exited the station, arm in arm.

Struggling to decide which problem to deal with first, Jim turned to Barbara and asked, “What are you even doing here?”

“Me? Oh, I’m just here to deliver a message. From an anonymous third party.” She patted her flawless coiffure as she added in breathy undertones, “I am, as he put it, the cherry on top.”

“What message?”

Barbara took a deep breath and then recited, “My purpose is purposelessness, if you don't notice me I don't exist - what am I?”

Harvey swore under his breath, and Jim felt anger bubble up in his chest at the blatant calling card of a goddamn _riddle_ – he wondered if he ran fast enough, if he could catch up to Ed and sock him one in the jaw, evidence and procedure be damned.

“Yeah, I’ve got no clue what it’s about either,” Barbara declared with an elegant wave of her hand, “But! A job is a job, and us ex-Arkham gals need all the work we can get. And oh! Look at the time...” Barbara made a show of glancing at her watch, “I’m due for another meeting. Ciao!”

Barbara blew a kiss at Jim and tossed a smirk at Harvey before sailing out through the wide open doors, a whiff of perfume in her wake.

And that was how Jim and Harvey found themselves propped up against their dinged-up desks, gazing out at the destruction and ruing the source of all their woes: Ed Nygma.

“You know, I really thought that I was close to seeing it all,” Harvey mused, “After all the stuff we’ve been through...people killed with weather balloons, Fish’s umbrella boy running the underworld...but no. Today a little forensics geek brought our own house down on us with the help of his psycho boyfriend and a freaking _marching band_.”

“I thought the band was just a stroke of really bad luck – do you think they were working for Penguin?” Jim tilted his head at Harvey.

“You saw their eyes, Jim. The guy with the cymbals was out for _blood_.”

Jim huffed a laugh at Harvey’s serious expression but froze mid-grin, before leaping to his feet.

“What, what is it?” Harvey stumbled up less gracefully, looking around the station as if that cymbal player had come back to finish the job.

“Ed’s riddle – if you don’t notice me, I don’t exist,” Jim replied, “the answer is: a _distraction_.”

“ _What_ was a distraction?” Harvey threw his hands up in frustration, “All of that? What they hell were we being distracted _from_?”

“I don’t know,” Jim murmured, eyes flying around the station to see if anything was out of place – of course, _everything_ was out of place, a bomb had literally gone off in the building, “But if that was all just for show, I’m not sure I want to know what they was distracting us from.”

~~~~~

“You checked for tracers?” Ed asked, pen poised over his clipboard.

“Sure did, Mr. Nygma,” Gabe nodded.

Ed made a check on his list. “And you made sure that none of the explosive or incendiary devices were activated, jostled, or otherwise primed to combust during their trip?”

“Yup.” Another check.

“And you’ve completed an inventory?”

“Yessir,” Gabe handed Ed a piece of paper.

Ed gave it a cursory scan, and then scribbled on it, sighing, “I’m assuming you intended to note ‘heroin,’ the drug, which does not have an ‘e’ on the end –I’d be rather worried if there was a _heroine_ in one of these boxes.”

Gabe scratched his head, nonplussed, as Ed continued his examination of their haul – in all, while the GCPD had been busy being blown up and chasing after assassins, Oswald’s men had extracted millions of dollars’ worth of weapons, drugs, confiscated cash, and all kinds of wonderfully blackmail-able materials from the GCPD’s evidence lock-up.

Perhaps all the theatrics had been just slightly excessive, but in the end, the ease of access to the usually tightly guarded evidence room was worth it, not least because of the pure pleasure of knowing a dozen goons in ski masks strolled into one of the most secure locations inside the GCPD itself and wandered out carrying an empire’s wealth in cocaine and M16s.

Ed was focused on the successful execution of his biggest caper yet, but Oswald hardly even looked at the spectacular riches Ed’s genius had brought them – he only had eyes for the genius himself.

Oswald leaned against a crate of counterfeit Rolex’s and appreciated the sight of Ed standing tall, changed into a fresh suit after the last one was dirtied at the GCPD, and looking utterly delectable in a bright green that no one but him could pull off. The tidy clipboard and stern look he was leveling at Gabe only added to the attraction.

“That will be all, Gabriel,” Ed concluded imperiously as he tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned towards Oswald.

“Your men satisfactorily completed every step of the plan,” he began in businesslike tones, “extracting all requested materials from evidence and destroying the rest, as well as installing that nasty little computer virus I wrote onto the station’s main servers.” Ed finally cracked a smile, the smooth veneer beginning to morph into a more familiar kind of off-kilter glee, “I got access to all their classified files a few minutes ago and copied them, and now my little bug is erasing everything on their computers. When someone tries to pull up any of their databases, they’re going to have one very _unfortunate_ surprise.”

“Spectacular,” Oswald declared, “Truly, all of this... I don’t have words, my love.”

Ed beamed, but his joy faded into something more intent as he said, “The question is: what to do now?”

Oswald laughed with a touch of incredulity, “Ed, you just pulled off one of the biggest, most audacious heists in the history of the city, and you’re already thinking about your next move?”

“Of course,” Ed replied seriously, “The only way to keep winning the game is to be one step ahead.”

Oswald sighed affectionately and reached out to cup Ed’s face in both hands, “As long as we’re on the same side, we’ll _never_ lose.”

The solemn set of Ed’s features softened into something gentle and warm as he reached up to cover Oswald’s hands with his own. “You’re right, of course.”

“On the topic of what to do next...” Oswald leaned in, “I was actually considering the possibility of our taking a vacation.”

Ed’s brows pulled together and his lips pressed into a thin line, his mobile features broadcasting his feelings about the suggestion before he even opened his mouth. “I don’t think this would be a good time to leave Gotham, even briefly, there’s so much to do and....” Although Oswald’s face didn’t shift from an expression of vague amusement, Ed cut himself off and began to backtrack, “But if you really want to go, then of course we can –”

Oswald smiled kindly and stopped him, "I _considered_ it, but then I realized: why on Earth would I want to take a vacation from the perfect life you and I have built together?"

Ed’s mouth fell open as he visibly struggled for words, before settling on whispering roughly, “I _love_ you,” and then grabbing Oswald close, pressing their bodies together and kissing him fiercely.

“Gotham _will_ learn to fear us,” Oswald promised as they breathed against each other’s’ lips, “They will all cower before Ed Nygma and the Penguin.” He relished the sound of it, so grandiose and yet, within their grasp.

“You know, that reminds me,” Ed cocked his head thoughtfully, adjusting his hold on Oswald’s waist so they could embrace more comfortably as he spoke, “I’ve been wondering if I, too, should adopt a criminal nom de guerre.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Oswald grinned, “And I might have an idea you’ll like...perhaps we could talk about it over a glass of wine, at dinner?”

“That sounds lovely,” Ed agreed. “I don’t think we’ve gone on a proper date since our first one at Lucio’s.”

“Well, that should be remedied at once. What’s the most preposterously expensive restaurant in the city?”

“That would be Le Cirque,” Ed answered immediately, “But you have to make reservations months in advance if you want to get in.”

“Well, I think that we can convince them to scrounge up a table for Gotham’s most powerful couple,” Oswald said with a theatrical twirl of his cane.

“Indeed,” Ed agreed with a growing smile, “They’ll just have to find some room...”

“...or we will _make_ room,” Oswald finished with a grin that was all teeth.

Ed darted forward to capture Oswald’s lips in a fast, hard kiss before taking Oswald’s hand. “Shall we be off?”

“Certainly.” Oswald weaved their fingers together as they headed for the door and the watery grey light of Gotham skies. “This city won’t know what hit it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked reading this fic as much as I liked writing it.  
> Let me know what you thought!! <3


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